Match
by lindsay1220
Summary: Match. by mental Ze Meridian has a serious problem: despite the skirt, everyone seems to think she's a boy. Desperate to prove that having short hair, a bloke for a best friend, and a serious obsession with sport does not mean she's *full summary inside*
1. Keep Your Hands to Yourself

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

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Summary: Ze Meridian has a serious problem: despite the skirt, everyone seems to think she's a boy. Desperate to prove that having short hair, a bloke for a best friend, and a serious obsession with sport does not mean she's lacking in feminine wiles, Ze enlists the help of Sirius Black to set Hogwarts straight about the question of her gender. And since Sirius has just entered into a bet with his friends to see who can remain celibate the longest, he shouldn't have any trouble keeping his hands to himself…should he?

Disclaimer: I am in no way clever enough to have come up with Harry Potter or anything surrounding him - all recognisable characters, things, places, and names belong solely to JKR!

Warning: Right, so, I feel compelled to add an extra warning just in case those posted with the summary were insufficient: This story does contain adult themes, and is rated "mature" for a reason. If you are uncomfortable with crude and/or explicit sexual humour (or just sexual content in general), disapprove of the consumption of alcohol in even minor doses, are opposed to bodily exposure (all in good fun, of course), or prefer not to be party to "adult" situations, then this story is not for you. That said, there is nothing horribly offensive (I hope) or graphic planned at this point, and if that should change I will, of course, warn you. Thanks for respecting both your personal boundaries and the story. Enjoy!

Striker: football term; common name for a centre forward whose primary skill is scoring goals. the striker - usually one or at most two to a side - is mainly an offensive player known for keen footwork and excellent reflexes. some claim that a striker's skills are intrinsic and cannot be taught, that the quickness and ability are traits this player is born with.

Match.

Chapter I: Keep Your Hands to Yourself

'Ze! Ze love, you home?'

'Upstairs Mum!' Zenobia Meridian called, not bothering to go into the hall – she could already hear the clack of her mother's shoes on the stair.

'How's the packing – oh, hello Jack,' Elena Meridian smiled at the boy who was sat on her daughter's bed. Most mothers would have been concerned to walk into their daughter's bedroom and see a tall, fit blond comfortably ensconced on the pillows...but then, not every mother had a daughter like Ze. 'How'd the match go, then?'

'Three to nothing,' Jack replied happily, his grin wide and artless. 'Ze had two goals and an assist.'

'And Jacko had a total shut out,' Ze added, sticking her tongue out at her best mate.

'Excellent - well done both of you! When's the final?' Elena asked, taking a seat in her daughter's desk chair and folding the bottoms of a track suit neatly.

'Friday,' Jack and Ze chorused. 'Against Sherwood,' Jack added.

'And they're due for a right stuffing,' Ze added brightly. 'So that'll be fun.'

'Well, I'll just have to make sure I'm off work to see it then, won't I?'

Ze whirled round to face her mother. 'You're getting off work to see our match?'

'Well of course I am – it's not every day a mother gets to see her daughter's football final. And Dad's been telling me how both you and Jacko have worn yourselves ragged for it – I wouldn't miss it for the world.'

Ze swooped in and hugged her mother tight around the neck. 'You're the best, Mum,' she said proudly.

'As are you,' was the warm reply. 'Now, are you staying for supper Jack?'

'Well, I'd hate to impose –'

'Please stay,' Ze begged. 'Gran's coming over, and I can't do it alone – please don't make me…'

Jack immediately smirked and pretended to be undecided. 'I dunno – does she still think I'm your boyfriend?'

'Oh come on,' Ze groaned. 'It's not my fault she's a nosy old cow!'

'Your grandmother is a very lovely woman,' Elena said sternly as she stood, hoping she managed to sound half as if she meant it.

'Yeah, if you're married and settled,' came the snide - and predictable - reply. 'If she was trying to turn you into Cinderella, you'd be complaining too.'

Elena couldn't suppress her smile. 'You might have a point, but having her as a mother in law is trial enough, thanks. If Jack wants to stay, he's more than welcome, but if he'd rather not endure the torture then let him go peacefully. Don't let her wear you down Jacko,' she added as she made for the door. 'And if you do stay, come and give me a hand cooking? I've never managed to do it right your way…'

She clicked back down the corridor toward the stairs, and Jack shook his head. 'Your mum's fantastic.'

'That she is,' Ze agreed, shoving a large handful of black fabric into her school trunk.

'Whas'at?' Jack asked through a yawn.

'Robes,' was the reply, issued from the depths of the trunk as she dug through the books and bits of rubbish that had been left there over the summer holiday. 'Wish I could find my tie…'

'Where's your broom?' Jack asked, standing and peering into her wardrobe.

'By the door – it needs a good polishing.'

'Got the kit?'

'Under the bed.'

Jack grabbed up the broom, unwrapping it as he crossed back to the bed. Setting it down he lay flat on the floor and dug through the mess of sport equipment and odd socks that was crammed beneath the frame. 'It's a graveyard down here,' he choked, coming back up clutching a dusty wooden chest. 'When was the last time you did a proper cleaning?'

'I dunno – 'bout five years ago?' she guessed, grinning. 'You sure you don't mind doing that?'

'Nah. So – school on Sunday, eh?'

'Yeah. You going to survive without me?'

'I always do. You ready for quidditch?'

Despite the fact that Jack was a Muggle, Ze had never seen any reason to lie to him about what she was. They'd been best friends since the tender age of four, when Jacko had moved in next door and wandered into their garden to watch Hugh Meridian teach his daughter the basics of football. Though Hugh was a Muggle with a Muggle job and clothes and car, it hadn't taken Jack long to realise that the Meridians weren't like his own family. Of course, as Elena used a wand to do almost everything from turning on the lights to patching up her daughter's bruises and scrapes (of which there were many), it hadn't exactly been difficult. The fact that the both of them were absolutely mad about football had been enough to bond them for life, and when Ze told him she'd be going to Hogwarts while he went to his dad's old school, he'd taken it relatively well…after she'd explained that she'd be back for summers.

The two were as close as brothers, and for ages that's what most people assumed they were: brothers who looked absolutely nothing alike. It wasn't until the summer she turned thirteen that their coach even noticed that Ze was a girl. He'd always assumed Zenobia was a just an odd boy's name and never stopped to think that the slight, dark haired striker who played fearlessly against players twice her size might be a decent sized girl instead of an undersized boy. It had been a minor scandal – a lot of fathers thought that girls shouldn't be allowed to play with their sons – but when the coach pointed out that without Ze they'd be much closer to the bottom of the bracket in the tournament, the naysayers had closed their mouths.

And through all of it, Jack had kept her secret, and treated her exactly as a best mate should. The both of them had made other friends at school, but summer after summer they returned home and, immediately after setting their trunks down, went off to the park to play a game or two. The Meridians had never thought twice about the wisdom of letting a boy have unrestricted access to their daughter – as Ze's dad put it "she'd never shag Jack – they're on the same football side". Jack's parents hadn't been so trusting. Once when the two had returned well after dark, sweating and covered in grass, passing the football between them, Jack's mother had sat them both down and demanded to know if they were "doing things safely". Ze had immediately explained that they'd never run across anyone dodgy in the park or on the way home, and that since there were two of them no one was likely to attack. Her naïve, pragmatic response had more or less killed off Mrs Warren's suspicions. But other people made assumptions, smirking and suggesting things, and both Ze and Jack got into violent rows the summer they turned sixteen, defending one another's honour.

They were both aware that after this summer they wouldn't be together as they had been. Once he got his exams back Jack would have to decide where to go to university, and Ze wouldn't be with him there. She'd have to get a job of some sort, likely in the magical world, and they would be separated by more than geography then. But they didn't talk about it, revelling in the last of the warm weather, the last of the clear nights when they met in the park, the last of going down to the pub to watch matches with their friends. And here was Jack, asking about quidditch, already accepting that in five days, his best mate would be gone.

'Yeah, I'm ready,' Ze sighed, chewing her lip and tipping her football up onto the top of her foot, launching it for a bit of play off her knees and chest. 'Wish you were going to be there.'

'Well take some photos for me then,' he grinned, looking up from her broomstick. 'Everyone at school thinks the one's from last year are some sort of joke – they can't figure out how you're in the air. Sort of funny, really.'

'I still can't believe you showed them – I could be in loads of trouble for that, you know.'

'I know – and I didn't show them. Someone found them in my wardrobe – stupid prying bastards.'

'I'll send you a moving one of the first match,' she promised, catching the ball between her shoulder blades and freezing for a moment, then rolling it back down her shoulder.

'In that case, I guess I'll have to stay for supper – can't leave you all alone with the evil granny.'

'Too right,' she grinned back at him.

'I'll just go tell Mum then.'

'And check on my mum will you?' she called after him as he left. 'I can smell something burning!'

*.*.*.*.*

'There she is! Ooooh, how's my Zennie?'

'Hi Gran,' Ze said as brightly as she could, trying not to wince as her grandmother jerked her into a tight squinch, the cloud of perfume perpetually hanging round her making Ze's eyes water.

'Well, your hair's still too short,' Charlotte Meridian said as she stepped back and eyed Ze. 'But you do look a bit more like a girl, don't you? And look – you've finally got bosoms!' Before Ze could so much as grimace, Charlotte had reached out and completely violated her. Jack had to duck into the lounge and have a "coughing fit" to cover his laugher. He always seemed to have coughing fits when Gran Meridian popped by – she had commented more than once on his weakness for colds.

'Ah, Charlotte!' Elena cried, hurrying out of the kitchen and swooping in to kiss her mother in law's powdery cheek.

'Well Elena, you're looking very well,' Charlotte said, the bite in her voice barely audible as she adjusted her skirt primly. Looking at her, no one would ever guess she was a grandmother – mostly because grandmothers weren't known for caking on the rouge and wearing enormous push-up bras, or for dying their hair platinum blond and wearing long, orange false fingernails.

Charlotte had never really cared for her daughter in law, especially given the fact that Elena's dark hair and smooth golden skin had barely aged a day since she'd married Hugh twenty years before. 'Thanks,' Elena smiled in reply. 'Could I get you something to drink?'

'I'd love a gin.'

Elena's smile hitched: gin and Charlotte were a potent combination. 'Of course. Ze, why don't you and Jack show Charlotte into the lounge?'

'Oh, Jack's still around, is he – you've got yourself quite the fellow, haven't you Zennie?'

Ze winced again: she'd been trying for years, but absolutely nothing in the world could persuade her grandmother to call her anything but "Zennie". It always made Ze think of zinnias, a vile, bright little flower entirely too similar to the insipid daisy. Bad enough that she'd been landed with the old family name of Zenobia, which was archaic and difficult to pronounce at best, but Zennie? Honestly. She was just preparing to explain – yet again – that Jack was her best friend, not her chap, when Jack himself began to speak. 'Sorry Mrs M – we're still just friends.'

'Oh tosh – a girl's best friend is her boyfriend!' Charlotte said on the end of an obnoxious, trilling laugh. 'When are you going to make an honest girl out of her, eh?' she asked, accepting the gin and tonic Elena was offering.

'Well, I quite adore her, but I don't think my boyfriend would appreciate me dating a girl,' Jack replied with a perfectly straight face. Elena nearly collided with the door-frame in surprise, and it was Ze's turn to duck out of the room, her fist shoved into her mouth to stifle her laughter. She could hear Charlotte choking on her drink, and Jack emerged moments later, grinning widely. 'That should shut her up for a bit.'

And it did…for a bit.

'You know Zennie, you could get a boyfriend in a second if you'd just dress yourself up properly,' Charlotte was saying over dinner. 'You'd be quite pretty if you'd let your hair grow out, and if we got you some nice clothes. I never got to buy pretty girls' things,' she continued mistily, staring into the distance. 'Three boys – it was all trousers and sport socks. Now and then a woman does long for a dress and lacy knickers.'

Jack coughed into his napkin. Elena's knuckles were white as she gripped her fork. It was Hugh who spoke up in Ze's defence. 'Mum, Ze's happy the way she is – we're not going to pressure her to change.'

'Oh Hugh, when are you going to realise you've raised a perfectly unnatural daughter?' his mother asked, swirling the dregs of her third g&t in the glass. 'Honestly – look at her. If I hadn't seen her wrapped in a pink blanket in hospital seventeen years ago, I'd never know she was a she!'

'You know Gran,' Ze interrupted before Elena's temper could snap, 'I've always been curious: what colour was your hair before you went blond?'

It was Elena's turn to cough discreetly, and Charlotte's turn to grip her fork tightly. 'Whatever do you mean, pet?' she tittered. 'I've always been a blond!'

'Really? 'Cos I was cleaning up a bit in the attic, and I came across these photos of you and Grandad from ages ago, and it was the strangest thing – your hair was all grey – almost white, really. But they were old photos – maybe it was just a trick of the light or bad ink or something.'

'Bad ink,' Charlotte said in a strangled sort of voice, her hand going protectively to her head, the vivid orange of her nails clashing horribly with her hair. 'Must have been – I've always had blond hair, got it from my mother's side. It's really a pity you didn't inherit it.'

'Mmm,' was all Ze said, and conversation turned to football, a subject Charlotte had no choice but to remain silent on, as she had no idea what to say.

But it didn't stop her from railroading Ze again during dessert. 'You know love, I can't help but notice you only wear those horrible sports bras.' Ze nearly spat her pudding back out onto her plate, and her grandmother mistook her surprise for embarrassment over Jack's presence. 'Oh, Jack's not offended, are you Jack?'

'Er, no ma'am,' he managed, being very careful not to look at Ze for fear of laughing himself sick.

'Of course not – lovely creatures, what do they call you now? Poofters? Poofs?'

'Er, either?' Jack said, mostly through his teeth, his shoulders shaking with suppressed howls of mirth.

'Exactly. But, as I was saying, those sports bras are horrible – they flatten out what little you've got! Now if I could take you to the shop where I buy all my underthings, well, we could sort you right out. They've the sweetest little woman there who knows absolutely everything – ten minutes with her and you'd go from fried eggs to a full English breakfast! –'

'Okay, that's it,' Ze cried, standing so quickly her chair rocked on its legs, nearly tipping over. 'I'm through – my bras are not table conversation anymore and Jack is not a poof, he only said that so you'd leave us alone about being friends. And I'm bloody tired of you coming round here and upsetting everyone and nagging me about how I look. The way you go on it's like you want me to go shagging half of Yorkshire! If you want something you can dress up and call poppet then buy a bloody dog but leave me out of it, yeah?'

'Oh Zennie –'

'And don't call me Zennie!' Ze yelled, turning and stalking out of the room, hastily followed by Jack.

'Oh dear,' Charlotte sighed as the adults listened to them hurrying up the stairs to Ze's room. 'Do you think if I just bought her one of the bras and let her try it herself?'

*.*.*.*.*

'I cannot believe she said that!' Ze raged in her room, running her hands through her short hair. 'Does she even listen to herself talk?'

'Yeah,' Jack sighed. 'I think she does. Look,' he added bracingly, 'I know she's a right pain, but she means well - she honestly thinks she's helping.' Ze snorted contemptuously. 'Well at least she doesn't pinch your cheeks anymore,' he said, hoping to make her laugh.

'No, now she's on to pinching other bits.' With a groan Ze flopped down onto the bed and he sat beside her. 'I just wish she'd shut up, you know? I don't need her to be proud of me or anything – Mum and Dad do more than enough already – but if we could have one bloody dinner without her bringing it up…'

'She's gotten better,' Jack pointed out. 'She hardly mentioned any of the boys she'd like to send you out on set ups with.'

Ze snorted. 'That's only 'cos all of her bridge friends are out of eligible grandsons – Marge Somebody or Other's grandniece got the last one, or so she says. Well, not the last one – Dottie Jacobs grandson is still open, but even Gran says he's too rabbity to date, and if Gran says that…'

'Blech – Jack the Poof definitely wouldn't be interested,' Jack joked.

'You really are the best mate in the world, you know that?' Ze said, grinning at the memory of her grandmother's face at Jack's "revelation".

'Yeah, I know – and I know you owe me for it too,' he laughed.

'Anything you want.'

He grinned. 'A ride on the broom. A long one.'

She bit her lip, and then grinned to match him. 'Alright – but I've got to make us invisible.'

'Fine by me.'

She reached for her wand. 'Hold still then…'

*.*.*.*.*

'We're going to miss you,' Hugh sighed, hugging his daughter close.

'I'll miss you too Dad – but I'll write every week!' Ze promised, letting go of her father long enough to hug her mother.

'And we'll write back. Who knows, Tubbers might even decide to deliver a few of our letters,' Elena joked, referring to the notoriously lazy family owl.

'I wish you had an owl,' Ze sighed, turning to hug Jack tightly.

'But I'd have to be a wizard,' he pointed out, picking her up and dangling her in their traditional embrace.

'I know – I wish that too sometimes.'

'But then I'd beat you at quidditch, and you'd be angry,' he said with false melancholy.

'Oh shut it,' she growled, slapping his shoulder as he placed her on the platform floor once more. 'Write often?'

'Only if you write back.'

'I will.'

'Right, so I'll hear from you by Halloween.'

She rolled her eyes but grinned widely before turning back to her parents and grabbing up the handle to her trunk. 'I'll see you at Christmas,' she promised. 'And I'll write you loads before then.'

'Bye!' they called, waving to her as she turned towards the barrier.

'Bye!'

Just as she reached the barrier she heard Jack shout 'Avengers forever!' and turned over her shoulder, flashing him a grin. The last thing she saw before the barrier closed around her was her family and her best friend grinning at her widely. Seventh year couldn't have begun a better way.

A/N - read and review please!


	2. There's No Place Like Home

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

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Disclaimer: i have never been, and never will be, brilliant enough to invent something as wonderful as Harry Potter - Ms J.K. Rowling takes all credit, and i own nothing.

Assist: primarily used in American football (soccer, if you will). an assist is the clever bit of work by one player that allows the striker/scoring player to take control of the ball just before driving it into the net. an assist (or assiting player) is just as important as the scoring player, as it is this bit of difficult footwork that allows the goal to be properly set up. however, traditionalists are, sadly, often reluctant to acknowledge the importance of the assist, despite its clear prevalence in the sport.

Chapter 2: There's No Place Like Home...

'Oi!'

'Wotcher!'

'Gerroff Mum!'

'My trunk -'

'My rat!'

'Oh bollocks – the cat!'

Ze ducked the moment she was through the barrier, her instincts telling her that it was the best course of action. She narrowly missed an enormous handbag and the even larger woman wielding it; it seemed someone's rat had gotten loose…and then someone's cat… and now this behemouth of maternal instinct was swinging that blasted handbag, trying to save the cowering rat. The cat was clawing at nearby ankles, trying to beat the woman to the rodent, and Ze only just missed being scratched viciously. Fervently glad that she'd sent her own owl ahead to Hogwarts, Ze managed to weave her way out of the crowd and towards the train.

'Oi – Ze!'

She looked up to see a lanky boy with brown hair and loads of freckles grinning at her over several third years' heads. 'Clive!' she called, tugging her trunk after her and cleaving through the crowd of younger students.

He hugged her tightly, pulled back and ruffled her hair. 'Good to see you – thought you weren't going to make it though – train leaves in less than a minute. Come on!'

Together they hurried onto the train, hauling her trunk up just as the engine gave a loud whistle and the pistons began to pump. 'Come on – there's a compartment back here… how was your summer then? Did you win the football final?'

'Yeah – it was brilliant. Really close game – two to one in the end. They're our biggest rivals though, so it was only fitting. How's Tommy?'

Tommy was Clive's older brother. He had finished Hogwarts two years before, and after a year of extended study at a school in Italy, was due to start his first real job. 'Mum says she can't wait to have him out of the house. A'course, that really means she'll sob herself dry when he finally gets a flat in the city, but I won't be around for that, thank Merlin.'

Ze chuckled. 'Jack says hullo, and Mum says if you're looking for a job after school, to give her a Floo.'

Clive pulled a face. 'Oh the life of a wizard solicitor – how I cannot wait to live you. You decided what you're doing after school yet?'

Ze didn't have a chance to reply as they had reached the compartment, and the door was thrown open by a rangy boy with a shock of red hair who dragged the both of them in and slammed the door shut immediately. 'Hello to you too Rob,' Ze grinned, tilting her head up because Rob McEaneny was almost two heads taller than she. 'Have a nice holiday?'

'Never you mind that,' he said breathlessly, his dark eyes gleaming in his pale face, a wide grin stretched below them. 'Almost ruined it, you two did – tromping through here like –'

'Like everyone else is,' Ze pointed out. 'The train's barely started moving – loads of people are still looking for seats. What are you up to, anyway?'

'Potter – he's Head Boy, didn't you know?'

'Potter's Head Boy?' Ze felt her jaw drop so low she was afraid it would scrape the floor. 'You didn't tell me,' she turned to Clive, who was looking equally shocked.

'I didn't know – and I've already seen him!'

'Where is he? And more importantly, what the bloody hell happened to make him Head Boy?'

'Ought to be coming back this way soon,' Rob said in a low voice, pulling the shade slightly to the side and peering out.

'What's he doing?' Ze asked, turning to the other inhabitants of the compartment, all of them fellow Gryffindors and most of them quidditch players.

'He's set a Knicker Switch hex – you know, when James and Lily walk through, their knickers will swap places like –'

'Got it, thanks Pete,' Ze said with a nod, sparing a smile for the slightly dumpy boy, who returned it with a watery grin. She had always felt a bit bad for Peter Pettigrew, mostly because it was quite obvious that he was neither as attractive nor as clever as his three best mates, and everyone seemed to talk about it all the time. None of his friends were here now, though, which was odd. Normally where one "marauder" was there were three more - but maybe James had already been excused for Head Boy duty. Merlin only knew where Remus Lupin and Sirius Black were – probably off snogging their girlfriends in the loos.

In addition to Rob, Clive, Pete and herself, there was one other boy in the compartment, a head shorter than Rob, but twice as broad. His skin was the colour of coffee and his eyes a shade darker; his high cheekbones and sculpted mouth reminded Ze of some ancient pharaoh of Egypt. In her private opinion, Zeke Ni'KinDinga was one of the best looking boys she'd ever seen. And his girlfriend thought so too, so that took care of any romantic hopes she might have had. But in addition to being handsome, Zeke was kind and funny, if a bit quiet – certainly the polar opposite of Rob. They were Gryffindor's beaters, and a more mismatched pair of humans there had never been. Ironically, they were best friends.

'They're almost here!' Ze was squashed against the wall as Rob and Clive edged back from the door to admit a sixth person into the already cramped compartment. She heard the door shut once more and didn't need to ask who was now taking up the space by the window: Sirius Black's hair, pitch dark and shining and thick, was sticking up over Clive's shoulder. 'Here they come,' Sirius was murmuring, Rob behind him looking as ecstatic as Sirius sounded. 'And almost there – almost there – almost – THERE!'

He and Rob fell into hysterics as a loud shriek sounded from the corridor, quickly followed by a much lower voice shouting, 'What the ruddy hell!?'

'Brilliant!' Rob cackled, exchanging a high five with Sirius, who was crying he was laughing so hard.

'Nice knickers you've got there Prongs,' Black guffawed as he slid the door open. 'Really excellent colour – do they match what's up top?'

Ze, grinning widely, peered under Clive's arm to see James Potter staring in horror at his crotch, which was covered by a pair of very lacy pale green girls' pants. They were on over his trousers, and when Ze followed Clive's gaze to the girl next to Potter, she saw a violently red pair of shorts covered in miniature griffins, their wings enchanted to flap. Poor Lily Evans – she looked ready to sink into the floor. But not before she'd hexed someone's bollocks off.

She was also staring at her crotch in horror, the shorts on over her own jeans, and realisation seemed to be dawning rapidly. 'Why am I wearing pants covered in griffins?' Her head whipped round to look at him, spotting the lacy green underpants that seemed like they would be rather constricting, especially on a bloke. 'POTTER!' she shrieked. 'You give me back my knickers NOW!'

'These are yours?' Potter asked, his eyes glazing over slightly.

'Kinky, eh?' Black grinned with a waggle of his brows.

'Later mate,' Potter replied, and took off running. With another shriek, this one ending in some very nasty threats, Lily took off after him while Ze and the rest collapsed laughing.

'You know, you might have waited until they'd seen the prefects,' a dry voice from behind them said, and Ze turned to see Remus Lupin leaning idly against the corridor wall. 'They'll never be able to keep order now.'

'Thanks for the advice on responsibility Moon,' Black laughed. 'But you've got to admit, that was brilliant.'

'Oh, very,' Lupin agreed, as wry as ever. 'I just hope – for her sake – that Lily manages to catch him. They looked like rather nice knickers.'

'Well you would know, wouldn't you?' Sirius sniggered. Lupin shot Sirius a nasty glance, but then broke into a grin.

'What're you on about?' Clive asked Sirius, eyes narrowed.

'Never you mind,' Sirius and Remus chorused, and it was Ze's turn to snigger into her hand.

'What?' Clive asked, turning after her to reenter the compartment.

'Can't be sure,' she shrugged. 'But last term several pairs of knickers went missing – right out of the dormitory. Lily and that lot were on about it for ages – thought it had to be Black and Potter and Lupin, but they couldn't ever prove it 'cos there's no way for blokes to come up the stairs, right?'

'Not necessarily true,' Sirius grinned widely as he slid the door home and dropped onto the seat across from Ze. Lupin wasn't behind him – presumably he had gone on to the prefects meeting, but Ze knew he'd report back later on the Lily/James pants situation. 'There are loads more doors in your dormitory than you might think.'

Ze flashed a grin in return. 'Just make sure it's not my knickers you're nicking, and we'll be right enough.'

Sirius waggled his brows. 'Rumour had it yours weren't that, shall we say…scintillating.'

Ze tipped her head back and laughed: Sirius didn't offend her, and though she wasn't great friends with him, being somewhat quiet and shy, and honestly a bit put off by his good looks, he entertained her and they were decent mates. 'I don't buy them with the intent of anyone else seeing them,' she pointed out. 'So next time you decide to muck through people's things, leave me out of it. And if I were you, I'd avoid Dorcas Andrews too – she's convinced there's an enormous black dog going round, taking people's pants.'

'She's a nutter,' Rob said, shaking his head, joining the conversation at the mention of Ze's notoriously paranoid dorm mate. 'Tried to report me to McGonagall for having on odd socks – said it didn't match up with uniform requirements or somefing.'

'Sounds like her,' Ze yawned, settling back onto the seat next to Clive, and balancing her feet opposite between Sirius and Zeke. 'Every year she puts lines on the floor, around her bed like, and if anything crosses that line she gets a bit foamy round the mouth. Frightening, really. Lily's not much better, mind you – neat as a bloody pin, she is.'

'Bet they don't take kindly to your nasty quidditch kit, do they?' Zeke asked, flashing his white grin.

'Not a bit,' Ze replied with a small smile. 'So I make sure to leave as many old socks out as possible – just to keep them on their toes.'

Conversation got a bit distracted after that, with Ze and Clive catching up on one another's holiday, Zeke and Rob settling down to mutter over something, and Sirius and Peter whispering rapidly, no doubt plotting their infamous start of term prank. They were a bit of an odd group, the only thing in common really being quidditch. Although Sirius, Peter, and Clive lived together in the boys seventh, along with James and Remus, Clive was more often with Ze than the other four. Rob and Zeke were sixth years, and though they spent the majority of their time with the Gryffindor side, they still were close with the other blokes in their year. The only member of the team missing besides James now was Allister Wood, the keeper, a burly fifth year who was possibly more sport mad even than Ze. And that was saying something. Ze had assumed he would be here, considering his social circle mostly was the squad, but perhaps he'd been waylaid by his dormmates, all of whom seemed to like the stocky lad despite (or perhaps because of) his obsessive devotion to quidditch.

As it was, Ze had no trouble passing the remainder of the train ride in enjoyable banter with her team, Peter and, once he'd returned, Lupin. Things got a bit dicey then – seemed Peter had recently broken things off with the girl he'd been seeing over the summer…only to start on again with one of her good friends. Sirius and Lupin were having a go at him about it.

'Well it's just bad form, isn't it Pete?' Remus chuckled. 'Dating her friend right after breaking it off with her.'

'She's the one who's friends with Kate,' Peter pointed out, the tips of his ears pink. 'If it's going to be a problem, it's between the two of them.'

'Oh, come off it,' Ze snorted, not at all shy about expressing her opinion – everyone else had. 'That's bollocks and you know it.'

'What?' Peter asked. 'What's so bad about it?'

'Look, you've just broken things off with a girl – who's she going to turn to, eh? Her best friend of course. But, if the bloke that broke her heart is now dating said best friend, then not only has he embarrassed and hurt her, he's stolen her support. And that, my friend, can only be described as low.'

'Just because girls think like that –' Peter sputtered, Rob nodding sagely at his elbow.

'Girls aren't the only ones that think like that – what if you were dating a girl and then one morning she sat down with you at breakfast and said, "as much fun as it's been, I'm going to have to end it" and then turned round and started snogging Sirius? Are you saying you wouldn't be just a bit upset? With both of them?'

'Well…' Peter trailed off, not meeting Ze's eyes. 'But it wasn't like that…'

Everyone was looking between Peter and Ze, considering what she'd said. 'You know,' Rob said thoughtfully after a moment. 'If it wasn't for moments like this, I'd completely forget you're not a guy.'

'Thanks Rob,' Ze sighed. 'That's such a compliment.'

Ze's infusion of common sense effectively ended the conversation about Peter's love life, but before anything else could really take over the door opened and James slumped in, looking decidedly worse for wear. 'Lily?' Lupin asked simply.

James nodded, tucking into a narrow space between Sirius and the corridor partition. 'Horrible row – she thinks I'm the one that set up the hex. And she might be a bit upset about the fact that all the prefects saw us wearing one another's pants, too…'

Sirius winced. 'Sorry mate – it was just a joke.' Rob, looking less sincere in his contrition, nodded his support.

'I know,' James replied with a tired smile. 'No harm done, really – s'not like she fancied me before.'

'Girls are shite anyway,' Sirius growled, his voice bitter and dark, all the previous good humour gone. 'You're better off without one – trust me.' His face was drawn and his mouth was twisted in a nasty imitation of a smile.

His comment had the entire compartment hitching for a moment before conversation returned full throttle. Clive shot Ze a confused look, and she could only shrug in reply – she had no idea what all that was about. Sirius had a girlfriend, as far as she knew, one he'd been dating for almost two years. Quite the couple, Sirius Black and Grace Harper. But when Sirius continued to glare blackly into space, muttering about girls, Ze decided that something was definitely up. 'Oi, James – walk me to the changing rooms and show me where Lily's sitting?'

'Eh?' James asked, obviously confused; normally it was Clive who wandered out with her.

'I'm going to let Lily know it wasn't you who set her up – trust me, it'll make things better. So if you'll show me where she's sitting…' Ze trailed off, giving James a significant look.

'Right, okay. Er…back in a minute then…' James stood and walked out with Ze. Once they were in the corridor and the door was safely shut, he shot her a questioning glance. 'What's up?'

'How about you explain what's going on with Sirius before Clive or I put foot in mouth and say something wrong?' she suggested, keeping her voice down just in case.

James shook his head, gnawing on his lip. 'I should have thought of that – the whole team needs to be warned, I suppose.'

'That bad?'

James glanced up with a wry smile. 'Grace broke it off with him about three weeks into the holiday.'

'You're joking! But I thought they were so in love and all that rubbish.'

'Yeah, well, apparently love doesn't stretch across the English Channel. Her family went to France over hols, right?' Ze shrugged: she and Grace weren't exactly friends, and she had no idea what the other girl did during her summers. 'Well, Sirius had some, er, trouble with his family and came to stay with me – it was really bad, he's been having a hard enough time of it and then that…well, anyway, Sirius goes to owl Grace to tell her he's staying with me, but before he can even write her a note, her owl's at the window. He's completely surprised, not to mention excited because he hadn't heard from her in about two weeks, and starts reading the letter out loud to me.'

'Oh bugger,' Ze groaned.

'Yeah,' James nodded in confirmation. 'Right there in the first line – absolutely heartless.'

'She owled to break it off with him? That's just cruel.'

'I know. I've never seen him like that before – I mean, so upset. He just said he wanted to be alone, and then the next morning he came out and said 'sod the lot of them – who needs girls?' and he's been like that ever since. I don't know what to say to him.'

Ze shivered and shook her head. 'You're not the only one. But thanks for telling me – I'll make sure to pass on the basics to Clive so he doesn't go saying something he shouldn't.' They nodded, both knowing that Clive had a tendency to do exactly that.

'You going to change?' James asked, nodding towards the loos, and Ze jumped slightly.

'Er, yeah, guess I should. Wait for me?'

James grinned. ''Course – you're going to talk to Lily, remember?'

Ze groaned. But she had promised…

A/N - right, so, thanks to everyone who reviewed! i'm rather astounded by the number of people who stopped to take a look at the story! i also owe an enormous thank you to everyone who said the first chapter reminded them of the film 'bend it like beckham' - i had never bothered to see it, and after the numerous comparisons, decided it was high time i changed that. and i have to say... it's bloody BRILLIANT - absolutely hilarious. and after watching it (about six times, mind you) i can say that yes, jules' mum and my gran (the inspiration for ze's gran - she's actually a real person, and i'm sadly related to her...) have far too much in common. but, that aside, i suppose i ought to say that the original inspiration for this story was this summer's World Cup (a moment of silence for becks, stepping down) and that yes, i am completely addicted to football.

that aside, i should also go ahead and warn you that Sirius is going to be a bit different in this story - i've decided not to take the tack of his being a "playboy", and while he'll still (of course) be good looking, he won't be the arrogant, girlfriend consuming tosser he normally is. right, so read and review! please?


	3. One Should Always Change One's Socks

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Fullback: position occupied by players who are the team's last line of defence (well, except the keeper) - when all else fails and disaster seems certain, it falls to the fullbacks to control the damage and protect the goal.

Match.

Chapter 3: One Should Always Change One's Socks

'She's just in there,' James said eagerly, nodding to a compartment with a closed door and drawn shade.

'You know I'm rubbish at this,' Ze sighed, looking at him pleadingly.

'Well she's got to hear it from someone, and she'll only try to hex me if I go in…' James rubbed his hair, as he always did when he was nervous, and smiled hopefully. 'Please?'

'Yeah, yeah – but I'm not promising miracles,' she warned as she shooed him off down the corridor. 'I'll meet you back in the compartment, yeah?'

'Right,' he grinned. 'Good luck!'

Snorting slightly and shaking her head, Ze turned back to the compartment and, after girding her loins for an influx of girl, tapped on the glass. 'Come in!' a voice called in strident tones: Lily Evans, ever the leader.

Ze slid the door open and peered in, smiling a bit. The compartment housed the three people that ought, according to every law of school society, to be her best friends. Lily Evans, Serena Ludlum, and Grace Harper were all seventh year Gryffindors, and as such shared a dormitory with Ze. Add in Dorcas Andrews, and you had the entire cast of the farce that was the Gryffindor girls' seventh. Luckily Dorcas, who was more than a bit odd, wasn't present in the compartment – her absence made things easier, if only a bit. As it was, Ze wasn't entirely sure of her welcome. Lily & Co. didn't dislike her, but, that said, they weren't her friends either. Serena practically convulsed with embarrassment when she saw Ze these days, an understandable reaction, considering Serena had once asked Ze to Hogsmeade, thinking Ze was a boy. Ze had been quite understanding, knowing that with a hat and several layers of sweatshirts and jumpers on she had probably looked a good deal stockier and more masculine, but Serena had never quite got over it. At the present moment Serena's cheeks were a brilliant shade of crimson, and she was looking anywhere but at Ze.

'Er, hullo,' Ze offered politely, suddenly having no idea what she was going to say.

'Was there something you wanted?' Grace asked, shaking back her curtain of white blond hair and fixing Ze with a pointed stare. Grace was quite good–looking and well aware of it; Ze had never cared for Grace's superior attitude, and after hearing about the way the blond girl had rather heartlessly chucked Sirius, Ze was even less inclined to like her.

'Yeah, actually, I wanted a word with Lily,' Ze turned her gaze to the redhead, arching her brows.

Given the pink tinge to Lily's cheeks, and the way her eyes were flashing, Ze guessed that before she had knocked the other girl had been in the middle of recounting the situation with the swapped knickers. 'Of course,' Lily said politely, her voice quite controlled, motioning for Ze to fully enter the compartment.

'Right,' Ze murmured, closing the door behind her. 'Er…just wanted to tell you that you shouldn't be angry with James over the whole, er…thing.'

One red eyebrow arched imperiously. 'I shouldn't be angry?' Lily repeated in dangerous tones. 'And what excellent reason can you offer to convince me that I shouldn't be angry?'

'Because he didn't know what was going to happen – the joke was on him as well,' Ze said quite honestly, ignoring the rapt attention both Serena and Grace were paying her. 'Rob and Sirius planned it – James had no idea.'

'And I suppose Rob and Sirius are incredibly sorry to have humiliated Potter and me,' Lily snapped, her tone positively dripping murderous sarcasm.

'No,' Ze replied baldly. 'They've no reason to be – it might have been humiliating, but to everyone else it was also quite funny. I just hate to see James in a state because you're angry with him, especially when it's not his fault. And for once, at least, it isn't. I'm not asking you to go talk to him or anything. I just thought you ought to know.'

Lily looked pensive for a moment, her eyes searching Ze's face. Grace tossed her hair again, somehow managing to sneer audibly. 'Honestly Lily, she's only doing this because Potter told her to.'

'I don't believe you're a part of this conversation,' Ze snapped before she could stop herself, her eyes flicking to Grace. When she glanced back at Lily she was surprised to see the other girl looking faintly pleased.

Grace sneered at her. 'If we'd wanted to make friends with you, we'd have done it by now. Why don't you run along and play with your stupid balls?'

'Because unlike you Grace, the balls I play with involve more than a bloke and an empty broom cupboard,' Ze replied with a smirk. 'Thanks for listening Lily – talk with you later.' Not giving Grace a chance to fire back, she slipped out of the compartment. But before she closed the door she saw the amused smile on Lily's face, and wondered if maybe Lily had as little liking for Grace as Ze did. Not that it mattered much – she and Lily weren't likely to become friends, and this last skirmish only insured that Grace would be as vicious as possible for the next few weeks. With a shrug Ze ambled back towards her friends.

'So, how'd it go?' James asked eagerly as Ze opened the door.

She grinned at him, unable to help herself: his face was so open and hopeful. 'I think it went rather well – I'd recommend leaving her well enough alone for a bit, but if you behave yourself and go slowly, you might find she's not that upset.'

'You're brilliant!' James cried, throwing himself at Ze and hugging her tightly.

'What's going on?' Rob asked, everyone having noticed James's exuberant response to Ze's appearance.

'Nothing,' Ze said quickly, as James crowed, 'she talked to Lily for me! And Lily's not angry anymore!'

'That's not what I said,' Ze began desperately, but James was already dancing around in what little space there was in the compartment, making everyone duck to avoid his flailing arms.

'There's no point in trying to talk to him now,' Sirius sighed, budging up to make room for Ze. 'It'll be hours before the euphoria wears off and he's ready to hear reason. Might as well do something to wait it out – Exploding Snap?'

'Sure,' Ze shrugged. 'I can afford to loose an eyebrow or two.'

*.*.*.*.*

Ze had expected to be more affected by her last welcoming feast and Sorting ceremony, by her last first day of school, or at least her last carriage ride up to the castle she had no qualms about calling home. But as she sat down to write Jack on the Friday of the first week of lessons, she realised that she had yet to feel any serious pangs of poignancy.

It's odd, she scribbled out about halfway through her letter, I always assumed it would be so difficult – everyone else has had a bit of trouble with it – the sevenths last year were positively maudlin, but I'm doing fine. Maybe it just hasn't settled in yet, maybe I'm due for some awful breakdown. Or maybe it's just not that bad. I'm hoping for the last, obviously, but don't be surprised if you get some awful letter from me in a few weeks, talking about how I've no idea if I'll survive or not.

'Writing to your chap?' James teased her, dropping down in the armchair opposite and flashing her a wide grin.

Clive, who was actually doing work for once, glanced up from the sofa nearby. 'Who has a chap?'

'Ze,' James replied, nudging her with his socked foot.

'That's the most disgusting sock I've ever seen,' Ze said, her lip curling as she stared down at the yellowed, hole-pocked sport sock. Almost afraid, she took a tentative sniff…and promptly gagged. 'Bloody hell – have you ever washed those things?' she asked in horror, using her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth.

'Nah,' James said with relish. 'Can't wash these – they're my lucky socks.'

'That's not luck James, that's complete disregard for hygiene! What're you wearing them for, anyway?'

'First Heads meeting – just me and Evans, together, in a room, with candles…maybe a fire…some moonlight…' he trailed off, wearing a decidedly silly smile.

'If it's just you and Lily, I suggest you change your socks – they're positively putrid and she'll know it's not her feet that stink,' Ze said, trying to catch his eye and make sure he heard her. 'Seriously James, those socks qualify as a sensory assault weapon – you'll be lucky if she doesn't demand you reschedule because she can't handle the stench.'

'…nice pretty sofa cushions…' James was babbling on, gooey eyed, now completely lost in his fantasy.

'He needs help,' Ze sighed, shaking her head.

'You're just figuring that out now?' Clive sniggered, putting the finishing flourish on his Charms essay. 'It's not like she's going to enjoy the meeting anyway – if she's concentrating on the socks, maybe she won't notice what he's saying, eh?'

Ze considered. 'Sadly, you might be right.'

'Tell Jack wotcher for me, and ask him if he'll send another copy of that magazine he showed me.'

'What magazine?' Ze asked suspiciously; the only magazine Jacko read was Footballer World and Clive wouldn't have the foggiest about any of the news in that.

'Never you mind – I'll send him a note myself.'

Ze rolled her eyes: boys. 'Fine. Write it up and I'll send them both when I go to the owlry tomorrow. What is it you want, anyway? Jack doesn't take any magazines besides football ones, and I know you don't care about those –'

'Don't worry about it Zazzer,' Clive sighed. 'You wouldn't understand – it's a guy thing.'

'I wouldn't understand – too bloody right I wouldn't,' Ze muttered before escaping to an area that didn't contain James or his lucky socks.

*.*.*.*.*

By the end of the second week of school quidditch had started back up, and Ze routinely returned to her dormitory soaked with sweat, sometimes rain, and more often than not, mud. Her dorm-mates curled their lips, made sidelong comments about the mess, and steered clear. Finally, after a particularly strenuous training session when Ze returned coated in muck and dripping, Dorcas Andrews shoved her glasses farther up her nose and asked Ze when she planned on taking a shower – because she clearly needed one. The verbal assault was completely unexpected (honestly - coming from Dorcas?), and everyone else sniggered - especially Grace.

'Dorcas Andrews made fun of me,' Ze mumbled to Clive the next morning as she slouched into her seat next to him in Transfiguration.

'What?'

'Yeah, right in front of everyone - Dorcas.'

'Dorcas Andrew hasn't got room to poke fun at a bubotuber,' Clive said indignantly. 'What's she on about, teasing you?'

'She said I smelled.'

Clive took an experimental sniff. 'No – you smell fine. A little bit like Christmas, actually… not bad…' he sniffed again, and Ze shoved him away.

'Geroff you nutter – like I need anyone to see you sniffing me. Everyone already thinks we're mad…'

'Well at least you know you smell nice,' Clive shrugged with his typical sanguine temper. 'Why was she saying you smell, anyway? Bit of a silly insult, really…'

'Because of quidditch – we're having a rainy month and I always come in damp and muddy. The lot of them are getting a bit snarky about it, but I never thought it would be Dorcas who'd say something.'

'Don't let her get under your skin – she's just jealous,' Clive said placatingly.

'Of what?'

'Er…hadn't thought that part out yet.'

'And you call yourself my best mate.'

*.*.*.*.*

That evening saw a steady rain soaking the grounds of Hogwarts, and more importantly, the Gryffindor quidditch side as they pushed themselves through their training session despite the wet.

'You've got to be faster than that!' James was shouting at his three chasers, all of whom were splattered with mud and breathing heavily. 'This play has to be flawless!'

'We know! But we can't bloody see!' Sirius shouted back. 'It's nearly dark and pissing down – the quaffle's so slippery you can't hold on to it. Face it mate,' he added more quietly as he came to a stop beside James in the air, 'it's time to call it a night – we're not getting anything done.'

'Right,' James sighed. 'All in!' he shouted to the pitch at large. 'Get cleared up and we'll meet in the common room later!'

With groans of relief the rest of the team dove for the ground and, mumbling about the damp, made for the changing rooms. Clive noticed Ze eyeing the sky, which was still spitting rain, and moved towards her. 'You're not planning to run in this, are you?'

'Run?' Sirius echoed, staring at Ze aghast.

Ze rolled her aching shoulders and finally shook her head. 'I'll run tomorrow morning when it's dry,' she sighed. She poked Clive in the ribs, falling in between him and Sirius. 'You ought to come with me.'

'Not likely,' her friend snorted. 'Unlike you, I stay fit without having to run circles 'round the pitch.'

'Yeah, and that's why you're always puffing at the top of the stairs,' she taunted.

'You mean you actually run in addition to training?' Sirius asked, his eyes narrowed.

'Course,' Ze shrugged. 'It keeps me sane,' she added. 'If I skip I get all muddled.'

'Where do you run in the winter, then?' Sirius asked, trying to remember if he had ever seen her out on the grounds in the snow.

'Round through the greenhouses – they're all connected, you know, and they make a nice loop. As long as I don't disturb anything, Professor Higgins doesn't mind.' They had reached the changing rooms, and the boys split off to go towards the showers.

'Weird,' Ze heard Sirius breathe as he ambled towards the tiled room, already shedding his kit. Shaking her head and turning away so as not to see more than she ought, she grabbed up her bag and made for the door. There were loads of disadvantages to being Hogwarts' only female quidditch player, but one of the worst was that there were no separate showers or changing rooms for her to use. If she wanted to clean up before going back to the castle, she would have to enter the frightful world of the male group shower – a realm she was frankly afraid of stepping into. So, instead of scrubbing off and changing out, Ze gathered her things and took her sweaty, malodourous self back to her dormitory, braving the sneers of the rest of the girls' seventh rather than see all her team-mates naked.

Absorbed in a fantasy about her very own changing room, complete with a lovely white tile shower and huge fluffy towels, Ze barely realised she was back in the castle. Her feet moved of their own accord, leading her back to Gryffindor tower. It wasn't until she reached the top of a staircase and made to step off that she noticed it was moving, currently in limbo between one corridor and another. Obnoxious giggles from a few steps below her clued her in to how ridiculous she must look, walking off into thin air.

'Knackered after all that quidditch training?' a giggling voice asked.

Ze turned to see a curly-haired girl in Hufflepuff robes smiling up at her. She looked to be in fifth year, the girl standing beside her the same age or a touch younger. 'Er…yeah…' Ze trailed off, wondering why the girl was smiling at her like…that.

'And here was me thinking you lot never got tired,' the girl practically purred.

Is she batting her eyelashes? 'Well, sorry to disappoint,' Ze said, nervously edging closer to the rail so that she could bolt at the first opportunity - this just wasn't normal.

'Oh, I'm not disappointed.' More giggles.

Oh Merlin! Ze felt her eyes widen as the epiphany hit her. She's flirting with me! Not AGAIN! Ze immediately cleared her throat, attempting to drive her voice an octave higher as she stuttered, 'Excellent.' Thankfully the staircase had grated into the landing above, and Ze hurried off. 'See you later!' she called over her shoulder in response to their giggling goodbyes, practically sprinting towards Gryffindor tower. 'Stupid bloody girls,' she growled as she pelted on, rounding the last corner before the portrait of the Fat Lady.

She was moving so fast she didn't see the figure in front of her, and ran headlong into the boy, knocking him back a step. 'Oohf,' he grunted, catching her up and steadying her.

The first thing she noticed was that he was practically a wall of muscle – she'd been going full tilt and he'd barely stumbled. The second was that 'he' was Sirius Black. And he was still holding her. 'Er – sorry – didn't see you there –' she said, stepping back.

Sirius let her go, but his hands were slow to drop to his sides. 'S'alright. Getting your jog in after all?' he added in an attempt at levity that fell painfully flat.

'Yeah, um, yeah. Right – I should probably go shower now…' blushing furiously for a reason she didn't quite fathom, Ze slipped around him, murmured the password to the portrait, and hurried inside.

Sirius followed, watching the scarlet–clad figure as it hurried up the stairs to the girls' dormitories. She was so…slight. He had never before come into full body contact with Ze, never done more than touch her in the casual, often unintentional way acquaintances do. But when she had run headlong into him, he had been unable to ignore how small, and how fragile, she had felt. He'd never thought of her as little – she was decently tall, and while he recognised that she was slender, he'd always assumed there was more to her. Perhaps it was the feisty strength she exuded, the fact that she seemed a bit larger than life – a trait no doubt born of years of having to hold her own in a world of males who were taller, bigger, and often stronger.

On feeling that slender body collide with him, his instinct had been to gather her up and shield her. Probably a lingering habit from hugging Grace, he decided as he turned from the now empty staircase. That must be what it was – Grace had been thin, small and petite. But she had curved more than Ze, a definitely feminine shape. He shook his head and made his way towards the boys' side of the dorms. The last thing he needed was to brood over his ex – girlfriend. The lying cow.

A/N - so, here is chapter three! thanks for the fantastic reviews - i adore you all! (which means you should leave another review...) right, so, on to chapter four!


	4. Of the Hair Bowed and the Hare Brained

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Man Short: the phrase used when a team is lacking a player from the original 11 in the line-up at the start of the match. players may be lost to either injury (this is less common now that substitutions are allowed) or (more likely) expulsion by a referee due to misconduct, etc. the fewer players a team has on the field of play, the more difficult they will find winning the match - losing a valuable player can have horrible effects on play in general, and may also demoralise a team.

Match.

Chapter 4: Of the Hair Bowed and the Harebrained

'It's Hogsmeade this weekend, did you hear?' Sirius whispered.

They were in the middle of Potions, a lesson that, in Ze's humble opinion, couldn't get more boring. Slughorn, the giant walrus of a teacher, droned on mostly for the pleasure of hearing his own voice – he certainly didn't say anything useful that she could make out. 'Hogsmeade? When'd they announce it?' Clive whispered back, sounding unusually eager.

'The notice was up this morning in the common room,' Sirius shrugged. He was seated on one side of Ze, and Clive on the other. They had all been late and as such had been forced to share the dreaded three person desk – no mean feat considering both Clive and Sirius were filled out with plenty of muscle and tall to boot. The desk would have been cramped for three people Ze's size; as it was, none of them could so much as shift without warning the others of a possible calamity. Sirius's shrug pushed Ze directly into Clive's elbow, causing her friend to stab his finger with his own quill and let out a yelp of pain.

'What seems to be the problem Mr Roberts?' All three of them looked up to see Slughorn's enormous velvet-trimmed paunch hanging over the edge of the desk. He was staring down at them over his moustache, looking a trifle put out.

'Sorry sir,' Clive immediately apologised. 'We're just a bit cramped here, and Ze accidentally bumped my elbow – I just stuck myself with my quill, that's all.'

'Hmmm,' Slughorn murmured, eyeing them suspiciously. They all stared back up as innocently as possible, and he finally gave in. 'Very well – in future have a bit more care Mr Meridian,' he added tartly. 'I'll not have you disrupting my class.'

Both Clive and Sirius valiantly fought outbursts of laughter at Slughorn's mistake, and though Ze could feel her ears going red, she ignored it. 'Yes sir – of course.'

'Right, now, who can tell me the use of salamander eggs? No-one? Well then…'

Slughorn returned to his lecture and Clive dug his elbow into Ze's side, guffawing silently. 'He thinks you're a boy,' he chortled as quietly as possible.

On Ze's other side Sirius was also having fits of laughter. Ze elbowed both of them as hard as she could given the cramped space, and was satisfied when they both had to scramble wildly to stay on the bench. Slughorn glared at them, and they hurried to right themselves, trying to look polite and studious. The moment the teacher had turned back to the board Sirius leaned in and spoke dead in Ze's ear. 'Have a bit more care Mr Meridian,' he sniggered. 'You're disrupting class again.'

'He called you Mr Meridian,' James chuckled gleefully as they exited the Potions room a half hour later. 'Can you believe it?'

'Seeing as it just happened in front of twenty-odd witnesses, I suppose I'll have to,' Ze replied, her tone positively acidic.

'Oh don't take it so hard Zazzer,' Clive said jovially. 'You're hair's just a bit flat this morning, and he can't see you're wearing a skirt under the desk – I'm surprised he even knew your name. Normally he's clueless.'

'I've been in his class for six years,' Ze snapped, then softened when Clive looked concerned. 'Sorry – I'm just in a bit of a mood I guess.'

'Well don't be! It's only three days till Hogsmeade!' Sirius grinned, linking his elbow with hers. 'Just think – Zonko's… butterbeer…Honeydukes… it'll be glorious.'

'Yeah,' Ze agreed, perking up a bit. 'I've got to pop in to the quidditch shop – I need a new wrist guard, my old one's cracked.'

'You didn't take a Bludger and not tell me, did you?' James asked, immediately sobering into quidditch business mode.

'No, course not – Dorcas stepped on my bag last night and crunched it,' Ze sneered. 'Stupid cow.'

'She still on you for smelling bad?' Clive asked. All the boys turned to look at her curiously: the idea of objecting to a dorm mate simply because he (or in this case, she) smelled a bit was clearly foreign.

'Er, not as such,' Ze admitted, deciding she'd rather not tell them that Dorcas was now following her around the dormitory with a can of Fibbsters Aromatic Spray (Guaranteed to Drive Odours Out!), and squirting it liberally on everything Ze touched.

'Good, otherwise I'd have had to charm all her socks mismatched or summat,' Clive said cheerfully.

'Whose socks are we charming?' Rob asked, joining them as they merged into the corridor leading to the Great Hall and lunch.

'Dorcas's,' the rest of them chorused.

Rob grinned gleefully. 'Well, whatever we're doing to her, count me in – she deserves it.'

'We're not doing anything. Yet,' Ze amended when the others looked crestfallen. 'But if and when, we're not mismatching her socks – I'd have to suffer through her having a nervous breakdown in the dormitory, and I'm just not up to it this early in the year.'

But Rob wasn't giving up that easily. 'This could be our chance,' he breathed, eyes alight. 'We could get the bow.'

Those words sent a lance of dismay boring straight into Ze's chest. Dorcas, bless her, was infamous for three things: she was an obsessive, compulsive, and paranoid follower of all rules; she was organised to the point of being certifiably mad; and every day, without fail, she wore an enormous lavender bow atop her stringy hair. On occasion she could be bamboozled into not reporting a violation of the rules. Once in a blue moon she could even be persuaded that all of her paper clips did not have to be aligned the same way in their little box. But never, ever, not once in her six years and some odd days at Hogwarts, had she gone without that bow. It resisted all elements – including fire and strong winds – and no attempt at harming, stealing or even altering its placement atop her head had ever succeeded. Most people regarded it as a supernatural phenomenon on a par with alien sightings and Professor McGonagall's lethal glare. Rob regarded it as a personal affront, and was therefore determined to do something to it.

'Give it up already, would you?' Zeke groaned, having joined them in time to hear Rob's last comment. He didn't have to be told whom they were discussing – if a hair bow and Rob were involved, it had to be Dorcas. 'You've been after that bloody hair bow since the day I met you, and you haven't done nofink to it.'

'He's got a point,' James sighed. 'It's invincible – it even resists Filibuster's Wet Starts.'

'And nothing - not even prank–proofed toilets - resist those,' Sirius said with the air of one who has proven this theory time and again.

'Has it ever occurred to you that Dorcas, being relatively clever, might have realised what you're about and taken steps to protect herself?' Remus asked dryly. 'She might be a bit daft, but she's not completely stupid – and you lot aren't exactly inconspicuous about it, forever aiming fireworks and transfiguration spells at her head.'

Rob just tutted. 'Nonsense – she has no idea what we're up to.'

Ze and Remus exchanged a look that said "yeah, right" and shook their heads. 'So,' Sirius began, obviously relishing what was to come, 'what should we try this time – I've got these extra-concentrated dung bombs…'

Ze rolled her eyes and turned to Clive, saying, 'please tell me you can talk them out of –' But what she wanted him to talk them out of went completely out of her head. Because Clive wasn't beside her. He had been just a moment before, she was sure, but he had completely disappeared sometime in the last twenty seconds. Unfortunately they were in the thick of the crowd pushing into the Great Hall for lunch, and no matter which way she turned, she couldn't catch a glimpse of her friend.

'Who're you looking for?' James asked, noticing her craning her head to look over the crowd.

'Clive,' she replied, trying not to run into anyone and still search for him. 'He was here just a moment ago-' James and Remus joined her in peering round, but it wasn't until they arrived at the Gryffindor table and the crowd thinned out that they spotted him.

'Oh, there he is…' James said at last, pointing towards the Ravenclaw table, where Clive stood talking to a very pretty girl. James squinted, adjusting his glasses. 'Who's that he's talking with?'

Ze had followed James' gaze and grinned. 'Ah – that's Claudia Howard,' she said knowingly. 'He swears he doesn't fancy her, but you should see the look he gets on his face whenever her name comes up.'

'Claudia Howard?' Remus asked, arching his brows a bit. 'Doesn't she date that Jared Fiore bloke - enormous prat?'

Ze shrugged. 'Seems they broke up - something about the fact that he'd finished school and didn't fancy having a girlfriend who was still at Hogwarts.'

'He always was a right wanker,' James sneered, eyes narrowed.

'You don't like him because he's the only person who's ever shown you up on the quidditch pitch,' Ze chuckled. 'Anyway - he hasn't got anything to do with it. The point is Clive fancies Claudia. She's always seemed perfectly nice – he could definitely do worse, mind you. Remember Betsy Burrows?' James and Remus winced, recalling the shrill, red–faced Hufflepuff Clive had somehow saddled himself with on a Hogsmeade weekend the year before.

'And that wasn't even his idea,' James muttered. 'Poor bastard.'

'Exactly,' Ze sniggered. 'Not that it wasn't funny. But at least Claudia's clever – and she doesn't yell in your ear, either. No, he could definitely do worse.' Satisfied that her friend hadn't been abducted by a contingent of evil gnomes or something equally dangerous, Ze settled herself on the bench, heaped some pudding onto her plate, and rejoined the plot against Dorcas.

' – if we hit it with an Incendiary Hex and a firework at the same time,' Rob was saying.

Sirius shook his head, gnawing on a chicken leg and discarding the bone. 'Doesn't work – we tried it in third year. I think our best bet is to steal it while she's sleeping – she's bound to take it off –'

'No luck,' Ze interrupted. 'The only time she takes it off is when she's having a shower.' She shot them all a significant look. 'And even then it sits right outside with her towel. So you lot had better draw straws to see which of you gets to follow her in there…'

'Yech,' Rob managed, looking a bit green around the gills.

'Did you have to?' Sirius moaned. 'I'm eating.'

'Just thought you might want to know…' Ze grinned.

'I'm telling you,' Zeke said, his deep voice rumbling with amusement, 'that bow is not meant to be harmed – there's some power guarding it.'

'Like what, the Bow God?' Rob sneered, but he didn't seem quite convinced in his own sarcasm. Privately, Ze thought the idea of the Bow God might not be so very far off the mark.

'We're not going to harm it precisely,' Sirius said, to which everyone snorted disbelievingly. 'We're just going to…borrow it for a bit. And maybe attach it to Snape's head…'

James' eyes positively lit at this idea, and he abandoned his roll to lean forward. 'That's brilliant – maybe if we're not trying to hurt it, it'll just, I dunno, fall into our hands.'

Zeke, Remus, and Ze all turned sceptical (and frankly derisive) stares on him. 'James,' Remus began in a very slow, clear voice, 'you've been after that thing for six years – you must've tried for it a thousand times. What makes you think that it's suddenly going to – to volunteer to be taken hostage?'

James looked vaguely hurt. 'Well…it could happen.'

'And McGonagall could take up belly dancing, but I'm betting – no hoping - she won't,' Ze shot back. 'Anyway, short of dosing Dorcas with a sleeping draught and figuring out the securing spell she uses to keep it on, there's no possible way you're getting it off her.'

Sirius, Rob, and James exchanged gleeful grins. 'That's brilliant!'

'Did you have to give them that idea?' Remus groaned.

'Oh relax - they'll never carry it off,' Ze chuckled. 'Dorcas is so paranoid she tests all of her food and drinks for tampering before she ingests them – has done ever since you two –' she shot James and Sirius an amused glance, '- tried to give her that Delirium Draught back in fourth year.'

'Wish it had worked,' Sirius sighed. 'I've always wanted to see her completely out of control and talking to the walls.'

'No you haven't,' Ze, who spent a great deal more time with Dorcas than they did, snorted. 'It's not a pretty sight.'

'I still don't see how she figured it was in there,' James mused, affronted even after all that time.

'It's Dorcas,' Ze shrugged. 'She has powers we know not.'

'The Bow God,' Zeke agreed with a sage nod. Ze toasted this with her juice before drinking.

Before conversation could resume (and the plotting could get any more ludicrous) Peter Pettigrew stumbled up to the table and collapsed on the bench. 'Oi,' Sirius said, sounding concerned. 'What's the matter with you?'

'Kettleburn,' Peter veritably sobbed, his chins wobbling as he stared vacantly into the distance. 'Detention. I've got to clip all the Woozles' toenails.' Everyone sucked air through their teeth in audible grimaces of pity. Kettleburn, the Care of Magical Creatures professor, was known far and wide as a crotchety old goat who was more concerned with protecting his menagerie of maniacal magical pets than educating students. Unfortunately for Peter, Woozles were a right pain in the arse. Roughly the size and shape of overgrown sewer rats, they resembled nothing so much as mutated, demonic Shiatsu. In addition to beady eyes and gnashing teeth, they possessed a poisonous barb cleverly hidden in the puff of hair on the end of their stubby tails. Grooming them – even when sedated – could be a dangerous game. Ze didn't even want to think about having to clip their toenails.

'It could be worse,' James offered bracingly. 'You could have to give the Thestrals dental exams.' Everyone paled at this; Rob, raised by Muggle Irish Catholics, hastily made the sign of the cross.

'He'd never,' Peter whimpered, looking close to tears.

Ze glared at James, who looked apologetic – he really had meant to help. 'Course not Pete,' she reassured. 'Most people can't even see them, can they? And even Kettleburn's not that mad.'

Peter simply made a small noise in his throat and collapsed forward onto the table, burying his head in his arms. 'Oi, what's wrong with him?' Clive asked, nudging Ze's shoulder for her to make room.

'Detention with Kettleburn – Woozle grooming,' she explained as she obligingly slid down.

'Blimey,' Clive said hoarsely, rubbing at his chest. 'He'll want to make sure he has his dragon hide gloves handy.'

'You'll just want to make sure you're moving quickly,' Sirius informed Peter matter-of-factly. 'The trick is to bob and weave – it's the tail you have to worry about mostly. Stay out of its way and you'll probably come off with nothing worse than a couple of bites.'

'You've done that detention before?' Zeke asked, sounding sceptical, but impressed.

'Fourth year. Dungbombs in the manticore pen,' Sirius replied succinctly. Everyone nodded understandingly.

'Is that how Kettleburn lost his eye?' Rob asked suddenly, sounding thoughtful.

Everyone in seventh year turned to Remus, who blushed. 'Er…no…'

'Eh?' Rob asked, eyeing the usually urbane Lupin. 'What happened then?'

'Er…let's just say he got a bit of a surprise…'

'What Moony means is he got a Whippersnapper Beetle in his binoculars,' Sirius sniggered.

'Put them up to his eyes and – bam! The little devil exploded,' James finished off, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

'It was an accident!' Remus cried, sounding completely unlike his usual calm self. Half the Hall fell silent at his shout, and he sank down until his nose was level with the table, obviously mortified.

'Well, it proves that old saying "it's all fun and games 'til somebody looses and eye,' James sighed.

'Yeah, then it's just fun,' Sirius chortled, and fresh guffaws broke out.

'It was an accident, it was an accident,' Remus kept repeating under his breath, his eyes squinched closed.

Taking pity on Remus, Ze kindly changed the subject. 'Speaking of fun, games, and lost eyes, I've heard a rumour that we're having a Divination review on Friday.'

'What?'

'No!'

'She wouldn't – that old bat.'

''Fraid so,' Ze sighed.

'Are you allowed to give surprise reviews?' Rob asked, his brow furrowed.

'Well, seeing as its Divination, part of the test is probably knowing in advance that we're going to have one,' Sirius pointed out sagely.

'Ahhhh,' Rob nodded, cottoning on.

'What's she going to test us on?' James asked shrewdly.

'Phrenology,' Ze said with a sneer. 'So I suggest you brush up on your cranial topography, lest you want to be poking one another behind the ears for the rest of the term.'

'That is such bollocks,' Clive mumbled through a mouthful of pudding. 'Phrenology – like the lumps on my head can tell you anything about my life.'

'Besides how many times you've fallen on it?' Ze asked sweetly.

'This coming from the girl who concussed herself by running into a ball with her face too many times,' he shot back.

'And see how much better looking it made her?' Rob teased.

'Shut it,' Ze grinned, shoving his shoulder as she stood. 'We'd better be going if we want to get to class on time…'

'Has Lily Evans taken over your body?' Sirius asked in mock shock. 'Because I could have sworn you just said something about class and being on time in the same sentence.'

'Oh sod off – its Hogsmeade this weekend, I just don't want a detention,' Ze replied, sticking out her tongue and blowing a raspberry at him.

Everyone else stood and as a group they wound their way out of the Hall, saying goodbye to Rob and Zeke who, being sixth years, had Potions after lunch rather than Divination. 'I don't see how she can just decide to give a review at the end of the third week,' Clive was saying petulantly as they climbed the stairs. 'I mean honestly, we haven't covered enough to warrant an exam.'

'Well it's not like the subject's difficult,' Remus pointed out. 'You just make sure you know what all the terms are and then invent a load of rubbish when it comes time to "divine the future".'

'And you a prefect,' Sirius tutted, shaking his head. 'Honestly, I can't believe you're encouraging such unstudious behaviour.'

'I learnt it from you – and "unstudious" isn't a word,' Remus added with a cheeky grin.

'Of course unstudious is a word –'

'Is not –'

'Is too –'

'Ah, maturity,' Ze sighed. 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…'

'How do you get a position like Divination teacher, anyway?' Peter asked. 'I mean, are there qualifications for that sort of thing?'

'Well, her uncle is supposed to be some sort of famous Seer,' James said with a shrug.

Ze snorted. 'My uncle's a chiropodist – that doesn't mean I know shite about feet.'

'What's a chiry – chiro – whatsit?' Sirius asked.

'A Muggle healer who specialises in feet,' Ze explained.

'They can specialise in feet?' Sirius asked in mocking wonder.

'Oh shut it,' Ze laughed, and turned to Clive. 'What's got you so quiet?' she asked, noticing the giddy smile wreathing his features. 'And looking as though you've just won a thousand pounds?'

'Hm? Oh, nothing…'

'Don't you "oh nothing" me. I'll tell everyone about the time you couldn't find a toilet and had to –'

'NO!' Clive shouted, plastering a hand over her mouth and drawing the attention of the others (not to mention everyone else in the corridor). 'Fine, I'll tell you,' he hissed when he let her go. She just flashed him a cheeky grin and he sighed. 'I asked Claudia to go to Hogsmeade with me, and she said yes,' he explained, his cheeks turning pink. He seemed unable to meet her eyes, and she laughed.

'I told you you fancied her!' Ze crowed. 'Well done, getting her for the first weekend too.'

'You've got a date for the weekend?' Peter asked enviously.

'Yeah,' Clive said, smiling happily. 'But, er… I've no idea where to take her.'

Everyone turned to Sirius. 'Why're you looking at me?' Sirius queried.

'Because you're the only one of us who's managed to retain a significant other,' James pointed out logically.

'Not true!' Sirius cried. 'Moony's had three girlfriends!'

Everyone looked at Remus, who shot Sirius an arch glance. 'I hardly "retained" them for any length of time though, did I?'

'Well, you took them all to Hogsmeade,' Sirius said petulantly. 'That means you're qualified to give advice as well. Besides,' he added, his voice growing bitter. 'It's not as though I'm "retaining" Grace anymore.'

James shot a frantic look that fairly screamed "change the topic!" and Ze hurried to fill the blank. 'Er, you could take her to the antiques shop,' she suggested. 'They've several lovely old brooms…' she trailed off when the others stared at her like she'd sprouted several extra legs and begun to tap dance. 'Or not,' she finished off meekly, suddenly feeling quite embarrassed.

'The antique shop might not be the best idea,' Remus said tactfully to fill the silence. 'But there's always Honeydukes, or the Three Broomsticks.'

'Whatever you do, do not go to Madame Puddifoots,' Sirius said suddenly, grabbing Clive by the arm and stopping him dead, eyes wide. 'You'll die.'

'You won't die,' Remus sighed. 'He's being melodramatic,' he continued reassuringly. 'Although it is a bit…'

'Repulsive?' Ze offered, and once again found them all staring at her. 'What? Have you ever seen that place – it's like someone vomited pink and lace all over a perfectly serviceable room.'

James shook his head slowly. 'You really are a boy' he mumbled under his breath.

'She's spot on,' Sirius said before Ze could correct James. 'It's horrible – really, really horrible, and once you go in they never let you back out, not for hours. And you have to sit and drink tea and listen to music…'

'That doesn't sound too bad,' Clive said slowly.

'Trust me, it's a death sentence,' Sirius said solemnly. 'And as a close friend and confidant, I advise you to never, ever step foot in that den of iniquity.'

'They have nice cakes though,' Peter piped up, and everyone looked at him. Ze, having just received a similar glance after her antique shop faux pas, knew exactly how he felt. 'Or not…'

A/N - thanks so much to all who have reviewed - i appreciate it more than you know! as always, opinions and constructive criticism are welcome, and i do enjoy hearing your views on the current state of our favourite sport... right, well, thanks for waiting for yet another chapter - hope you enjoyed (you could always leave me a review so i'll know what you thought...)


	5. Double Entendre

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

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Header: a ball that is (deliberately) propelled by a player's head rather than his or her feet. front headers and back headers are distinguished, but the most important thing to note about this tactic is that it offers a chance to ground and control the ball after a long pass - and it can give one a truly horrible headache if done often or improperly. after all, one has to be a bit mad to go round hitting rapidly moving objects with one's face, doesn't one?

Match.

Chapter 5: Double Entendre

By the time they reached the Divination classroom Clive had even less of an idea about where to take Claudia on their date, and Ze was privately wondering how much sense her friends had between them. James and Remus were locked in a seemingly unending argument about whether the Hogshead or the Three Broomsticks was the better pub to take a girl to, with Peter continually interjecting comments regarding the sustenance provided by each establishment, weighing the Hogshead's meat and two veg against the Broomsticks' fish and chips. Sirius played devil's advocate for each of his friends, and Clive just listened in a daze.

'Right Zazzer – what do you think then?' James asked suddenly, wheeling round to stare beadily at her, his expression indicating that she had better agree…or else.

Ze, not terribly intimidated by the nebulous threat of "or else", gave a shrug. 'Doesn't matter. The Hogshead's cheaper, but the Three Broomsticks has butterbeer – all depends on what you want.'

'Try the Three Broomsticks,' Remus advised with a wise air, nodding to Clive. 'Much nicer atmosphere – trust me.'

'Oh bollocks,' James snapped. 'A girl likes a place with a bit of character – keeps things exciting.'

'If you call being terrified for your life "exciting",' Remus muttered, motioning for Ze to ascend the ladder ahead of him. They had only just reached the entrance to the Divination classroom, which happened to be spindly ladder leading up to a trapdoor, and Ze wasn't overly thrilled about being the first person in – she didn't care over much for the subject. But it was easy… with a sigh she climbed up the ladder, telling herself that an hour wouldn't turn her brain to rot.

Seconds later, she realised how wrong she was.

'Agh - what is that smell?' Ze choked as she pushed herself through the hole and to her feet. A sickly sweet odour filled the air, hanging over the room like a sugary pall, and Ze was forced to cover her nose and mouth with her sleeve just to draw breath. And even then, the air that coated her throat felt sticky and foul.

Behind her Remus and Clive erupted into coughing fits as they too dragged in a lungful of the cloying air. 'Bloody hell,' she heard Sirius gasp, sounding half–asphyxiated. 'It smells like a Persian whorehouse in here.'

'And you would know this how?' Ze asked, her arch tones somewhat muffled as she accidentally got a mouthful of her robes.

'Vivid imagination,' Sirius replied, raising his own robes to cover his nose and mouth.

'What is it?' James coughed, having drawn his wand to shoot cleansing charms into the air around him.

Remus took a tentative sniff, and gagged. After several seconds of retching and heaving, he managed to answer. 'Seems to be a particularly potent blend of sandalwood, patchouli, and nightbloom.'

'Sounds like she must have robbed an incense caravan the last time she was reading palms in Arabia,' Ze said, a series of shallow breaths having allowed her some oxygen intake. She had followed James' example and begun cleansing the air round her head, and while it didn't eliminate the odour, it did make the air somewhat breathable, provided she didn't move.

'What do you think the barmy old bat is up to now?' Clive coughed. 'Teaching us to tell fortunes by getting arsed up on fumes and having "visions"?'

'Sadly, that's probably part of the advanced curriculum,' Remus replied dryly.

'Doesn't sound too bad to me,' Sirius shrugged, grinning.

'Why are you all standing about in this stupid manner?'

Everyone jumped, inhaling huge lungfuls of the sticky air, and coughing uncontrollably as they turned to stare at the Professor.

Lenora Aurora (in addition to being cursed with one of the worst bits of nomenclature Ze had ever heard of) was not an attractive woman, and the fact that Ze was now viewing her through teary, blurred eyes did nothing to enhance her appearance. As though determined to capitalise on features that could only be admired as "striking", Professor Aurora favoured the outlandish and exotic in all her clothes and accessories. She was tall and gangling, narrow shouldered and pigeon toed, with a very strong jaw and an enormous beak of a nose. Her eyes were too small to compete amongst the monolithic planes of her face, but she compensated for this by lining them in the manner of an ancient Egyptian priestess, with heavy black strokes that completely surrounded the eye and drew back onto her temples. Without fail she always wrapped a large turban round her head, affixing it with an enormous brooch of an eye within two interlocking triangles. James and Sirius maintained that she wore the turban because she had long ago shaved her head bald and had the phrenology regions tattooed onto her scalp for easy reference. Ze, who had enough feminine instinct to draw a much more accurate conclusion, supposed that Aurora just had really awful hair and had discovered that wrapping it in layers of cloth was a simple way to deal with it. Either way, it was not an aesthetically pleasant choice. Today the fabric of the turban was a brilliant mango orange above robes decorated equally with tropical hibiscus and glittering runes. The overall effect was of a drunken maharaja who had gotten dressed in the dark.

The combination of her appearance and the putrid odour rendered the class speechless. 'Well?' Professor Aurora intoned, her voice deep and raspy thanks to years of copious incense inhalation. 'Why have you not all taken your seats? We have a great deal to cover today – a great deal.'

'She might have an Inner Eye, but she bloody well doesn't own a mirror ' Clive mumbled, and Ze unsuccessfully attempted to squelch a snort of laughter.

Unfortunately, this drew Professor Aurora's beady, over-made eye. The professor seemed to think that Ze had sneezed. 'I do hope you are not allergic to Kama Sutra, Miss Meridian,' Aurora intoned in a voice that wasn't so much resonating as congested.

Ze choked, as did the boys around her. 'I'm sorry – the – the Kama Sutra?' Ze managed to stutter out in a strangled voice.

'Yes,' Professor Aurora agreed serenely. 'My new incense blend – its called Kama Sutra.' With one beringed hand she gestured to a table in the centre of the room, over which a small cloud of very dense smoke was hanging. 'That faint tinge of spice that you're smelling is actually a very powerful magnifier of mystic vibrations.'

Ze rather felt that Professor Aurora had confused the nature of the "vibrations" - Kama Sutra? it had to be a joke – and considering that the "faint tinge of spice" was forcing most people's eyes to tear up and run unstoppably, Ze decided that whatever the intended effect of the incense, it was failing miserably. 'I, er, see,' she said lamely, as the professor was still looking at her in what was supposed to be a regal and intimidating manner. It looked as though she had had too many prunes at lunch.

'Mmmm,' Aurora murmured, shifting her gaze away to sweep over the class which was decently sized as it was an easy period in the midst of N.E.W.T. level lessons. Most people were still standing, hands and robes over mouths, drawing shallow breaths and looking a bit faint. 'As none of you are seated, I believe we shall mix our lesson up a bit,' the Professor began smugly. 'Rather than sitting with your friends, whom you know quite well, I believe I will pair each of you with a stranger and see how well you have grasped our recent lessons on the fine art of phrenology. Your findings will be turned in at the close of the lesson – I will use my knowledge of you to ascertain whether you have discovered the true nature of your partner.'

'Yeah, but she'd actually have to know our names to do that,' Sirius muttered, and they all bit back laughter.

'Now, let us see,' Aurora was saying, having moved to the incense table and snatched up a bit of parchment. 'I will call out the names of your partners – please seat yourselves and begin the moment you are paired.' She glanced down at the parchment, which must be a list of all those enrolled in the subject. 'Jocasta Stearne, you will be working with…Lucas Hoots,' she began, running a bony finger down the list. 'Yes, and…Kendrick Allen, you will be paired with Geoffrey Bails…Lucinda Martin with Peter Humphries…' So far no one had moved. Ze dimly thought she might recognise one or two of the names, but couldn't place them. 'Myric Stoess will be with…' she trailed off, as though just noticing that no one was following her orders. 'Well go ahead and partner off – you won't bite one another, I'm sure.'

Everyone glanced at one another, and finally an intrepid Hufflepuff raised his hand. 'Er, Professor Aurora?…All those students are in fourth year…'

Ah ha! Ze thought. I knew Lucas Hoots sounded familiar – he's that stocky boy who cleans the quidditch equipment… Professor Aurora didn't seem so pleased with this epiphany. 'Oh, yes…I…see that now,' she murmured, glancing at the top of the parchment. 'Hm, yes, must have mistaken the page.' She rummaged in an enormous pile of parchment and pulled out a much shorter, and much more battered, scroll. 'Here we are – seventh years. This is the seventh years, isn't it?' she asked, staring beadily about.

'And she's the one who's psychic,' Remus muttered darkly.

'Er, yes ma'am,' someone else finally affirmed.

'Excellent,' Aurora replied, clearly ready to begin again and forget her previous mistake. 'Well then, let me see… ah, yes, Remus Lupin? Is Mr. Lupin present?' Remus, grimacing widely, raised his hand. 'Ah, there you are. Yes, and you will working with…' she scanned the list, 'with Mirabell Jenkins.'

Everyone turned to see Mirabell, who was staring idly into space, twirling her hair round her finger. Her friend, seeing the Gryffindor boys (plus Ze) staring in their direction, immediately began to preen, and elbowed Mirabell, who jumped and let out a loud giggle. 'Perfect,' Remus growled, his lip curling. 'I wonder if there's a phrenology bump that indicates a tendency towards insipid laughter.' With that bit of wry wit, he took himself off for an hour of torture in a stuffy corner.

Professor Aurora had continued matching throughout Remus' departure, and they all jumped when she said, 'James Potter will be working with Nona Stiles.' No one had to look: they all just winced. Nona Stiles fancied herself Hogwarts' resident Social Planner - a title that really meant she was responsible for bludgeoning the faculty into having dances for the students, dances that never turned out well. As far as Ze was concerned, Nona Stiles was singlehandedly responsible for the advent of the crinoline and hoopskirt in witch fashion, not to mention a ridiculous trend of wearing flowers in one's hair.

'Please, no,' James whispered, his face ashen. 'She used to fancy me…'

Sirius shot a glance over his friend's shoulder. 'Think you can drop the "used to", mate – she's giving one of those little finger things.'

Ze pivoted, hoping to catch Nona in the classic "sod off" gesture, the first two fingers of her hand raised, but all she saw was a gangly girl with loads of wild brown curls waggling her fingers coyly at James. 'Just hope your hand doesn't get stuck in all that hair – you'd be attached to her for life,' Clive said with a wide grin. James paled another impossible shade, and Ze chortled.

'Clive Roberts and Ethyl Coonce…'

It was Clive's turn to pale and duck, immediately seeking shelter from Ethyl's piggy blue eyes. 'She'll sit on me like that time in second year…' Clive squeaked from behind the chair he was using as a shield. 'I couldn't breathe –'

'Mr. Roberts? Mr. Roberts, Miss Coonce is waiting,' Aurora was snipping, and Ze forcibly dragged Clive out by the scruff of his neck, lying through her teeth and telling him Ethyl would be fine. He moved off with the gait of a man headed for the guillotine.

'Sirius Black and Zenobia Meridian…'

'I thought we were supposed to get stuck with people we didn't know?' Ze said blankly. Peter just shrugged.

Sirius was looking thrilled. 'Brilliant,' he grinned, grabbing her arm and leading her to a table in a murky corner. 'We can just arse off and make something up at the end,' he said gleefully.

'Sounds like a plan to me,' Ze yawned, drooping her bag onto the table and collapsing onto the large pouf that served as a seat. That was really the only upside of Divination – the seating was perfect for a nice kip. And she could do with a bit of extra sleep…she'd even got used to the smell…sort of…

'Excellent, now that everyone is paired off –' Ze glanced up to see Peter Pettigrew trailing an enormous girl with a Slytherin tie on, his face a mask of horror – '- I have a few more things to go through before you begin your analysis. Firstly, I would like to say that an important region has been omitted from your text – I cannot imagine why, but Blind & Bumble have not included it. It is the Immora Ridge, a small protrusion just behind the ears, here,' Ze looked to see that Aurora had got Daphne Winters by the head and was using the poor girl as a demonstration dummy. Daphne was wincing, and her partner was backing away in fright as Professor Aurora jerked Daphne's head this way and that to insure that the entire class got a view. ' I expect everyone to examine the Immora Ridge and report on it in their notes. Secondly, I am going to give a demonstration of the proper method for examining a cranium.'

'Ought to have her own checked over,' Sirius mumbled.

'Please take careful notes, as this is very important. The person being examined must be seated, their hair unleashed and flowing.' Sirius and Ze glanced at one another, sniggering at the idea of either one of them having "flowing" hair. 'The phrenologer must begin at the crown of the skull and work progressively outward. Many of the protrusions you are seeking will be relatively unobtrusive – but they are there. You must use all of your senses, engage completely with your partner, thrust your hand into the hair and feel out the knob.'

There were several chokes of surprise, and more than one hastily stifled guffaw. Ze shoved her fist into her mouth to keep from howling with laughter, and Sirius shook with silent mirth. Some poor soul at the front had the misfortune of being shocked into a loud and bursting cry of 'What?!'

Professor Aurora obliged him by repeating herself. 'You must completely explore the ridges and raised protrusions – commonly called knobs – which are quite enormous in some cases and rather insignificant in others. The size of the knob will completely explain certain aspects of a person's personality.'

'Can she hear herself?' a girl at a nearby table asked, completely gobsmacked.

'It is a very complex bond,' Aurora was continuing, addressing the class at large. 'Intercourse between examiner and examinee must be complete and thorough.'

'She doesn't even realise…' Ze breathed, hiccoughing with suppressed giggles.

'…the physical must meld with the mental to create an explosion of understanding…'

Sirius was now practically beneath the table he was laughing so hard. Across the room Clive was staring openmouthed at the teacher, completely unaware that Ethyl was watching him with a decidedly lascivious gleam in her piggy little eyes. Thankfully, Aurora was winding down. '…and so you must approach with a decidedly firm hand – your touch must be resolute and insistent, but you must be attuned to your partner's contours or you will never achieve the desired result.'

The entire class was now staring at her in utter shock, a few still plagued by random bursts of horrified laughter. Aurora glanced at them serenely, not noticing anything amiss. 'You may begin.'

Ze turned to find Sirius grinning wickedly at her. 'Right then,' he said, 'let's get your fingers on my knob.'

*.*.*.*.*

Fifteen minutes – and many cheeky jokes – later, Ze had her Divination book open on the table before her, and one hand tangled in Sirius' thick black hair. 'I don't think you've got one,' Ze said with a frown.

'Oh trust me, I've got one,' he chuckled.

'Well then where the bloody hell is it?' she asked, running her fingertips back and forth over the bit of scalp that was supposed to be raised.

'You're going to need to move your hand down a bit,' he explained, his eyes dancing as he took her wrist and guided it through his hair and down over his shoulder. 'And a bit more…'

Ze let out a snort of laughter, tugging her hand away and sliding it back into his silky hair. After another few seconds she sighed and gave up. 'Sorry, but you have absolutely no natural athletic ability – it says so right here on your skull.' She tapped gently and turned back to her book, looking for the next "region" she was supposed to search out. 'Now, let's see about your romantic sensibilities…'

This time it was Sirius who issued a decidedly bitter snort of laughter. 'Don't even bother.'

'Hey, you've got a girl feeling up your knobs right now – you must have something,' Ze teased, not liking the look in his eyes.

He cracked a smile at this, and while it was slightly twisted, it was still a smile. 'And clearly you're a girl who has loads of experience in feeling up knobs,' he rejoined.

It was jokingly said, and Ze knew that Sirius wasn't flirting with her – she was fairly sure Sirius didn't even register that she had a gender, much less that it counted – but it didn't stop her from feeling slightly off kilter. Ze had watched James and Clive and Remus chat up loads of girls over the years – she had even witnessed the mostly one-sided flirtation between Grace and Sirius – but none of it was ever directed at her. She participated in the banter among the boys and she could crack a knob joke with the best of them, but she had somehow arrived at a very strange place.

As the years had gone by the level of innuendo in the conversations between her friends had decidedly increased, and while Ze caught all the references, there were things she simply couldn't comment on. The boys (with the possible exception of James who lived, dreamed and breathed love for Lily) had gone about exploring the peril fraught world of snogging – and more than snogging – with relish. Ze, often party to their private conversations, had listened as the topics became more and more explicit and gradually felt herself more and more isolated from that aspect of teenaged life. She wasn't particularly interested in dating, mostly because all of the guys she would be interested in were already her best friends. While other girls had been acquiring and honing their feminine wiles with the help of their female friends, Ze had been acquiring and honing an impressive set of athletic skills surrounded by boys who understood her better than any girl her age had ever seemed to. It didn't mean she wasn't interested in dating someday – it just meant she didn't have the option now. Who would she go out with? Clive? That would be the most mingin idea anyone had ever had. Add to that the fact that boys never seemed to notice she existed, let alone that she was a girl, and you had the bizarre conundrum that was Zenobia Meridian's lack of a love life. And Ze didn't mind really, because she liked her life, her friends, her sport – she just wished that at this moment she was better prepared to volley back at Sirius with something that was actually clever.

'Right,' was all she could think to mumble, pressing closer to her book, her hand still tangled in his hair, her fingers now still. Sirius didn't seem to notice her momentary discomfort; instead he butted his head against her hand like a puppy demanding to be petted. Ze shot him a bemused glance. 'What are you, a dog?'

He let out a barking laugh. 'Depends on who you ask, love. Depends on who you ask.'

A/N - as i was posting this chapter, i noticed that there was relatively little "action" in it - and i do apologise. the next chapter is a bit more, shall we say?, scintillating... thank you over and over to all who have reviewed - i appreciate each and every one of you, and this wouldn't the same if there weren't comments waiting for me to read! (this is, of course, a hint for you to leave a review...)

~cheers


	6. Violence Is Not the Answer Most of the T

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 6: Violence Is Not the Answer... Most of the Time

Tackle: a manoeuver used to steal the ball from an opposing player. arguably the most physical tactic on the pitch, one can usually see a tackle coming, but on occasion (and much to many a player's dismay) a tackle can utterly blindside one, resulting in an extremely unpleasant collision usually accompanied by the sensation of one's body being brutally violated and followed by a close personal encounter with the ground.

Friday lunch was a very odd experience. As Ze settled into the table between Clive and Peter, she wasn't sure which boy was more out of sorts. To her left Peter was frantically flipping through his Divination text, mumbling 'I can't find it, I can't find it!'

'Can't find what?' Ze asked, pouring herself a healthy dose of pumpkin juice.

Peter's watery eyes looked at her, positively terrified. 'My knob! I can't find my Dimidium knob!'

Ze could only stare. 'Uh huh. I…see.'

Peter went back to shuffling through pages, muttering under his breath and positively twitching with nerves. 'What's got into him?' Ze asked Clive, sotto voce.

'Eh?' Clive asked, turning a blank stare on her, the corners of his lips turned up.

'You feeling alright? You look a bit…peaky.' He didn't look so much ill as glazed – like he'd been sneaking a few puffs of something besides incense.

'Fine,' he murmured, the smile widening slightly. 'Corking.'

'What's got into him?' Ze asked Sirius, who was seated across from her and looking uncharacteristically bleak.

'Hogsmeade. Tomorrow,' was the empty reply, and Ze, eyeing Sirius critically, decided he would rather she not prod him.

Instead she glanced up and down the table, noting the unusual amount of giggling that was taking place. 'Right.'

'Oi, you settled with Claudia where you're going?' James asked Clive, his mouth stuffed full of pudding.

'That's disgusting,' Ze mumbled, wrinkling her nose.

Clive wasn't so much as put off – of course, Ze wasn't sure he was capable of noticing little things like partially-masticated chicken. But when he answered his voice was normal and even, and his eyes seemed to focus a bit. 'Yeah – we're having a walk down the high street to look at the shops, getting our starcharts done at Madame Astrazi's, and ending with sarnies and butterbeers.'

'Which pub?' Remus asked keenly.

Clive glanced back and forth between James and Remus, the final vestiges of love-struck glaze clearing from his face as he suddenly remembered that they'd fervently argued just two days before. 'Er…'

'The Three Broomsticks,' Ze sighed. 'The Hogshead doesn't offer butterbeer.'

'I told you!' Remus crowed to James.

'You bribed him!' James rejoined, pointing an accusatory finger at Remus.

Ze glanced at Clive and spoke out of the corner of her mouth: 'Now might be a good time to run for it.'

'Right,' he mumbled back, his eyes wide and on James, who was yelling loudly at Remus. Grabbing his satchel and a handful of rolls, he stealthily got to his feet. 'See you after.' With that he took off sprinting for the doors, just as James turned round and bellowed, 'how much did he pay you!?' his wand pointed at Clive's vacant seat.

'Needed the toilet,' Ze said innocently when James's eyes came to rest on her, the question writ clear across his face.

'Oh sod it,' James sighed, the ire melting out of him in seconds. 'Pass the potatoes Moony.'

Ze shook her head as her friends returned to their normal, balanced selves (well, maybe balanced was a bit rich), shovelling food down with both hands. 'What're you doing for Hogsmeade then?' Sirius asked, shoving most of a chicken leg into his mouth and chewing rapidly, the little spat seeming to have revived his good-humour.

Ze leaned back a ways and replied. 'Dunno – just having a wander I suppose. What're you doing?'

He shrugged, swallowed, wiped his mouth, and smiled. 'Having a wander. Want to join us – can't promise cleverness, cleanliness, or safety from detention, but we'll have a spiffing time.'

'Sounds on to me,' she grinned in reply, just as Peter shot straight up in his seat and crowed in an ear-splitting voice 'I've found it!' Half the Hall turned to look. 'I've found my knob!'

Several moments of silence reigned as all eyes shifted from Peter to the teacher's table. Ze's fist was shoved into her mouth, and she could feel Sirius vibrating with pent-up laughter. Dumbledore merely dabbed his lips with his napkin and leant back in his chair. 'Ah, Divination,' he said cheerfully. 'Seems it has a practical use after all.'

*.*.*.*.*

'I think phrenology has officially been removed from the subject curriculum,' Remus chortled that night at dinner. Professor McGonogall, who had arrived in the Divination classroom just after the class had been "surprised" with a review, was looking much calmer now then she had then. She had practically drug Professor Aurora out into the hall, and in very poorly modulated tones informed the Divination teacher that her class was provoking immature jests among the students. Avidly listening and ignoring the exams in front of them, then entire class had tittered with repressed laughter while Peter had grinned sheepishly around.

'I think you might be right,' James sighed wistfully. 'And I was just getting used to having a bit of slap and tickle with my –'

'No more knob jokes, please,' Remus begged. 'I honestly can't take another, the whole thing's been overworked.'

Ze grinned. 'Here here,' she agreed, toasting him with her goblet.

'You're just jealous,' Clive sniggered, elbowing her.

'Nonsense,' she returned with a grin. 'I'm lacking the equipment and I'm still beating you at the game.'

Clive was about to reply to this when James went pale and dropped his fork. 'Oh bugger,' Clive mumbled, 'she's here, isn't she?'

Ze turned, spotted a curtain of long red hair, and let out a sigh. 'Too right. Should we drag him off before he does something regrettable?'

Remus shook his head. 'Looks like he's mostly just staring now – if the drool starts we'll have him out.'

'Right enough,' Clive muttered, keeping a careful eye on James.

Surprisingly Sirius wasn't taking part in the conversation. Instead, his eyes were also fixed on the group of girls – Lily was flanked by Grace and Serena – currently making its way down the Gryffindor table looking for seats. They made an impressive picture, Ze had to admit, Lily with her brilliant colouring, Grace pale and blond and Serena with her dark eyes and chestnut hair. But Sirius wasn't looking gobsmacked in the least. Instead, he appeared to be working himself up to something, gathering his courage so to speak. When the three girls drew even with their section of the table James let out a low groan, and Sirius stood.

'Grace, could I have a word?' he asked politely, his speech a little faster and choppier than normal.

Grace's eyes roved over him, briefly fixing on his, but she never paused. She passed him by as though he hadn't spoken – as though he didn't exist – leaving him standing with his napkin dangling from his fingers. Across the Hall, someone sniggered. Sirius returned to his seat, his expression open and easy-going, but his eyes flashed hurt. Ze couldn't stop herself from throwing a glare after Grace and the others.

What a cow.

*.*.*.*.*

Saturday dawned sunny and clear, with a hint of a fall chill in the air and enough of a breeze to have everyone agreeing it was the perfect day for Hogsmeade. In the Gryffindor girls' seventh Serena was bubbling over with excitement about her date with some Hufflepuff, and Lily and Grace were discussing their plans for a hens day. For her part Ze dressed quickly and tripped happily down the steps to the common room, wearing jeans and an old Hampstead Harriers quidditch shirt, intending to return to her room for a coat and things after breakfast. Clive was waiting and the pair of them met with the rest of the side to amble down to the Great Hall in a large mass of loud, blathering sport talk. Once seated they all dug in, still involved in a healthy argument about cobbing (the International Quidditch Association had just published the newly revised rulebook), and were soon making quite a fuss. Ze was gobbling down her toast, shaking a slice emphatically at Sirius (whose good mood seemed to have been restored by a night of sleep) to emphasise her point when Rob pointed above her head with wide eyes and frantic mumblings round a mouthful of porridge. His words were unintelligible, but he was making the universal sign for "duck!" Immediately she tucked her head down, luckily avoiding decapitation by her mother's enormously fat barn owl, Tubbs.

'Oi Tubbers – what're you doing here?' she murmured in confusion, helping to right the owl, whose landing had taken out a wide swathe of breakfast salvers and several goblets of juice. 'Sorry 'bout that,' she apologised to those around her, most of whom hadn't even noticed.

'Oi – what's he brought you?' Clive asked through a full mouth.

'Dunno,' was the puzzled reply as Ze untied the good-sized parcel from his feet. 'You going to be alright?' she asked the befuddled owl. 'Think you could make the owlrey?' Tubbers issued a shaky hoot and took off, destroying another healthy length of table as he struggled to get his bulk airborn. 'Dead clever, my arse,' Ze mumbled, watching him go. 'Mum, you're a nutter.' Putting aside her mother's claim of having the brightest bird in all of England, Ze turned back to the parcel and began to open it, trying to remember if there was anything she had forgot, and predictably coming up blank.

But when she opened the package, it was not anything she was expecting – not at all. There was loads of pink tissue, and perched on top of it was a cream-coloured card bearing her grandmother's distinctly ornate scrawl. 'Oh bollocks,' she mumbled, lifting the card out to read it.

Zennie –

I saw this the other day while I was out doing my shopping, and I couldn't help but think of you. I honestly think if you'd just try it you'd see such a difference. And if you like it, just write – it comes in loads of lovely colours, and you can get all sorts of different sizes… well, just let me know what you think!

Love,

Gran

'What the…' she pushed the tissue aside and gaped at what was in the box. 'Oh bugger it all to sodding hell.'

'What?' Clive asked, turning back from the argument to look from her ashen face to the partially unwrapped package. 'What – something the matter?'

Ze could only shake her head mutely, staring in horror at what lay before her. 'What's the matter?' Rob asked from across the table. 'You're looking like you've just seen a corpse, Zazzer.'

'Oh bollocks,' Ze moaned, pressing her face into her hands and shaking it back and forth. 'This is not happening, this is not happening…'

'What's in the parcel?' she heard Sirius ask from across the table and down a bit, and dimly, as though in slow motion, she watched Clive's arm reach across to pull the package closer to him.

'No!' she cried, but it was too late, and Clive had pulled the tissue wrapping aside and was looking down.

'It's just a – BLIMEY!' he shouted, his face going red. 'What the hell!?' he gasped, turning to Ze. 'Your gran sent you that?'

This was enough for Rob, who reached across and snatched the parcel. 'No! Rob, wait!'

'OOOOHHHHH!' Rob crowed, his eyes lighting as he reached in a pulled out the pale pink lacy bra, holding it up and swinging it. 'Look what we have here!'

It seemed that the entire Hall froze, and then, a moment later, burst into howling laughter. 'Oh Merlin,' Ze moaned, sinking down until her nose was barely level with the tabletop.

'Oi, Ze, what'd your gran send you that for?' James managed between guffaws.

'S'not like you've got anything to fill it with!' Rob cackled, holding the brassiere up in Ze's direction. 'Looks like this was made for at least a handful, and you haven't even got a pinch!'

Ze was fully aware that her face – her entire body, it felt like – was an awful tomato red. Worse, there was an unfamiliar swelling in her throat, and a prickling behind her eyes. 'What's she going to use it for – she'll never wear it!

'Rob –' Clive began, trying to stifle his laughter and reach for the undergarment.

'I know! We'll use it as the Gryffindor team mascot!' Rob shouted.

'It'll be the lucky bra!' Potter chortled.

'Look's like there's pockets or something in it…' as the rest of the Hall watched, laughing, Rob rummaged in the parcel and came up with two white blobs that looked like odd shaped water balloons. 'Look here – seems Ze's gran had the right idea! Don't worry Zazzer – put this thing on, and you'll have instant tits! Oh, don't be so shy!' he cried when Ze made to snatch the lot out of his hands. 'Here – I'll show you. You just slip these in like this – and then you just put it on – and there! All tarted up!' Rob was fiddling clumsily, but nevertheless managed to fit the padding into the brassiere cups before fastening the revolting contraption around his narrow chest. He was now standing on the bench of the Gryffindor table, wearing a pale pink lacy bra, and looking quite pleased with himself.

'Does wonders for you mate,' Zeke managed to choke out.

'Oi, let us have a go Rob!' another of the sixth years down the table yelled, beckoning for Rob to pass the bra down. Instead of throwing it, Rob climbed onto the table and stepdanced his way down to the boy.

Ze, who had literally been paralysed with mortification, sprang into action. 'Give it back, Rob!' she shouted, standing and running down the side of the table. He laughed and danced out of her reach.

Sirius and James were sprawled out on the table, laughing, and squawked when Ze bowled between them, grabbed Rob's leg, and jerked. With a loud yelp Rob tumbled onto his arse and Ze wasted no time in snatching the bra off of him, clouting him round the head, and sprinting from the Hall, the laughter following her.

As she disappeared Rob sat up, staring after her. 'What's she so upset about? It was only a bit of fun!'

*.*.*.*.*

Minutes later Sirius thundered up the stairs to the boys' seventh, hoping that Clive had managed to find Ze and bring her up – probably she'd be rowing with him about the whole bra at breakfast issue, but at least she would be there. They all owed her an apology, after all. But she wasn't there – it was just Clive, standing before the mirror, trying to comb his hair properly. 'Fighting a losing battle,' Sirius advised him before turning round and thundering back down the stairs to the common room in time to see a slender figure stalking across towards the portrait hole. He recognised the tatty red pullover with the number nine on the back, as well as the loose jeans and black hat – Ze, outfitted for Hogsmeade.

Sirius was just starting to go after her when a voice behind him called, 'Oi – he's here!' and then Peter was beside him, grinning. 'Ready to go? We couldn't find her – probably getting her coat and things. We'll catch her up in the village – no worries.'

'Zonko's beckons,' Remus added with a smile as he joined Peter.

'Then let us answer the siren's call,' James said dramatically, arriving on their heels. 'Onward!'

'Onward!' the other two chorused, and together they marched Sirius out of the portrait hole, in no mood to look for the lone red–clad figure somewhere ahead of them.

*.*.*.*.*

Ze stalked down the hill towards the village, trying to inhale calming breaths of cool, crisp air. Her throat felt like it was on fire, and despite the fact that she had hurled the lot of it – parcel, bra and tissue all – into the furthest corner of her wardrobe, she couldn't get the memory out of her head. The incident at breakfast was still fresh in her mind, and though she knew they had only been joking, that it had all been in good fun, she couldn't help that she was still seething over it. All her life she'd been friends with boys, and for the most part it didn't bother her – for the most part she thought as they did, acted as they did, and shared the same interests. She'd never had any use for giggling and flash clothes, and she had even less patience for the catty, often vicious methods girls used to communicate with one another. But, at the same time, she sometimes wished that the blokes would remember that she was a girl, that her knickers were different than theirs, that there was a reason she used a separate shower. It wasn't like she tried to act like a guy…

Face it, when fifth year girls start flirting with you, assuming you're a boy just because you're sweaty and in a quidditch kit, you know you've got problems, Ze thought ruefully, stuffing her hands into her pockets. It's fairly clear that from any distance, you look like a boy – even if you're wearing a kilt. Slughorn proved that, as did her own friends, constantly acting as though every nuance of her behaviour was masculine. And she was beginning to realise that it wasn't just the quidditch side, or a clueless professor – it was everyone.

And it had been going on for years. When her football coach had realised she was a girl and not a boy, she had been too young to really care – as long as he let her play, it didn't matter if he thought she was a boy or a girl or a dinosaur. And that had more or less set the standard. So everyone assumed she was Jack's little brother, wandering around in her too - large shirts and jeans. So the lads she played against all assumed she was just slight – just a quick, skinny little fellow. So Serena had mistakenly asked her out once, thinking she was a bloke – nothing serious, a mistake anyone could have made. And so a few Hufflepuff fifth years flirted with her when she was wearing her quidditch kit – they had been at a bit of a distance, enough so that she looked like a sweaty male. Of course that wasn't a problem. Except that it was – more and more. No one wanted to see that she was a girl, that she might eventually want to go out on a date with someone, that she might someday wear a skirt outside of school.

No one wanted to take the time, or make the effort, to see that there was more to her than an interest in dirt and sport and "boyish" things. Who decided those things belonged to boys, anyway? Who had the power to just divide all activities into "girl" things and "boy" things? And why couldn't she have a bit of both? How had she ended up in this aesexual wasteland where she was shunned by her gender peers and laboriously homogenised by her friends? Yes they technically knew she was female, but, perhaps in order to accept that she was their athletic and mental equal, they had erased all evidence of her gender from their minds. She could probably dance naked in front of them and they'd just ask how she'd got those awful mosquito bites on her chest. Having absolutely no vanity in terms of her looks, Ze wasn't so much insulted about the blatant disinterest in her body as she was their refusal to accept that she could be a girl and a top athlete, female and friend. Because that was the crux of the problem: her friends had chosen to ignore her sexuality so they could accept her as one of their own. If they saw her as a girl, then she couldn't be a confidant, a partner in crime – she would have to be somehow objectified, either physically or mentally. When she wasn't about they would have to make comments about how she had no arse, or how she wasn't worth shagging – because the only way they could justify calling her friend was if she wasn't a potential conquest. She knew it – it was how they talked about other girls, even James and Remus on occasion. Zeke, usually so quiet and reserved, didn't mind a bit of innuendo where his girlfriend was concerned. Only Sirius had never joined in on the banter, seeming to shut down completely whenever they turned their jokes on him. Those were the conversations Ze had begun to distance herself from, begun to ignore or shift out of, because while she didn't know how to explain that she was uncomfortable, she definitely knew she didn't want to be a party to it.

Trudging into the village she turned into the high street, her mind still whirling and her mouth set in a decided frown, she didn't even see the boy in front of her until they'd collided full on.

'Oi –'

'Sorry,' she said immediately, holding out a hand and attempting to smile apologetically. 'Didn't see you there.'

'S'aright,' the boy said, his eyes catching on her face as she began to turn away. 'Hey – you're one of the Gryffindor chasers, aren't you?'

'Er…yeah,' Ze allowed, turning back and eyeing him curiously. He looked vaguely familiar, and she realised that his brother had used to play on Ravenclaw's quidditch side. Robert Marlowe, beater, left school last year. Hm.

'Excellent – mind settling a bit of an argument?' Robert's brother was saying, his smile wide and friendly. 'See, it's my mate Tom – says Gryffindor have got a girl on their team, but that can't be right – all the positions are filled, your side's been whole since two season ago.' As he spoke he turned to wave to a second boy across the way. Before Ze could set him straight about the matter, the second boy was hurrying across the street, eyeing Ze and her Ravenclaw companion with interest.

'Eh?'

'Right, so this is Tom, who thinks you've got a girl playing for you – go on, tell him he's a right nutter,' the Ravenclaw ordered with a grin, nudging her with his elbow.

'Actually, he's got it right – we do have a girl, a chaser.'

'What?! Who?' Marlowe's face would have comedic in any other situation, but Ze was not disposed to be amused.

'Me,' she said through teeth she couldn't fully unclench.

Tom was looking a mite embarrassed: he clearly had recognised her once he'd gotten close enough. 'She is mate – took me awhile to believe it too – no offence,' he added hastily when Ze's eyes narrowed further. 'It's just, er…um…you play so well….right…going to go back over there now…' he trailed off, looking desperately embarrassed.

'That's not possible – you're not a girl, you're taking the piss!' the first boy, whom Ze was seriously starting to dislike, was saying very emphatically. 'You've arranged it with him, haven't you? That you'll say you're a girl,' he shook his head at Ze with a patronising smile and turned to his friend. 'What, are you going to split the money with him?' he asked Tom, who was edging backwards awkwardly, obviously desperate to retreat.

'No, she really is a girl – ask around. Well…ask the older Gryffindor's at least – most of them know who she is,' he added, licking his lips, his eyes darting to Ze, who was now looking positively thunderous.

'Sorry, I'm not buying,' Richard said smugly, shaking his head and turning back to Ze. 'You're not a girl – there's no way! Look at you – you couldn't fool anybody, even if they were blind!'

Ze's vision was starting to go red; the Ravenclaw was not making a favourable impression. 'I think I know if I'm a girl or not,' she snarled.

'Right,' Richard sniggered, thrusting his arms out and pushing Ze's chest. 'And that's why you haven't got any ti – OH BLOODY HELL!' he broke off, shouting, as his hands came into contact with what were, though small and firm, unmistakably breasts, disguised by the bulk of the sweatshirt and the usual sports bra. 'Oh shit – I am so-'

But what he was, Ze never found out, because before he could form that last word, her fist had slammed into his face and speaking was quite out of the question.

A/N - couldn't resist, sorry. the long dissertation regarding male-female friendships is arguably an extended stand on a personal soapbox, but, well... who says one can't clobber one's readers over their heads with one's point? especially if one is being extremely earnest. ;) and be prepared for even more melodramatics to come - the next few chapters should be absolutely ridiculous (picture the author with an enormous grin). but, they should also be good fun (i hope) and for those of you who are eagerly awaiting the "transition to womanhood" - i believe that's how one person phrased it - i can only promise that loads of jokes are on the way!

as always, thank you to all who read, to all who reviewed, and to anyone who might have managed to accomplish the latter without doing the former. i commend you!


	7. Everyone Has Their Limit

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

attack: to be in possession of the ball, and therefore running play. hence a player running the ball is an "attacking player" and the side in possession of the ball is the "attacking side" or "team". in football, as in life, it is better to be the attacker than the defender.

Match.

Chapter 7: Everyone Has Their Limit

It took Ze several minutes to realise that she'd walked completely out of the village and past even the Shrieking Shack. Her feet were moving furiously, her arms hugged tight round her middle, and as she glanced back she saw that several people were peering over their shoulders at her, clearly terrified. She had no memory of passing them. The knuckles of her left hand were sore and throbbing, proof that she'd landed a decent blow. If the crunch under her fingers had been any indication, it was possible she'd broken Marlowe's nose. And satisfying as the thought was, it was the last thing she needed to deal with at the moment.

After the debacle at breakfast she was sure to be in it with McGonogall, and now that she was going about punching people her chances of eternal damnation to detention were higher than they'd ever been. She doubted the formidable deputy headmistress would give a fiddler's fuck that Ze was fighting a losing battle with the rest of the world about what was under her Hogwarts robes. Because that was exactly what her altercation with Marlowe had proved: it had been an affirmation of her worry that everyone was confused about her gender. Well, that was just enough of that. She was tired of being mistaken, tired of being ignored, and tired of forcing a smile and correcting people.

Unfortunately, she had no idea of how to go about establishing herself as a girl. She simply knew she wasn't comfortable with everyone assuming she wasn't. And she especially wasn't comfortable with having her chest groped by some strange boy. She might have trouble figuring out the other part, but that absolutely would not be happening again. And if it did, Merlin help whoever was stupid enough to try.

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius spotted the red sweatshirt stalking down the high street, and guessed by the agitated speed of her movements that Ze was still out of sorts. He started towards the door to call out to her, but before he could take two steps James had pulled him back to examine a new model of dung bomb that promised an extra-concentrated stench.

By the time James was finished examining the tools of their trade Ze was long gone. She could be in any of the shops by now, or even have slipped by and gone back up to the castle. Of course, she might have popped into the pub… quickening his steps, Sirius led James into the Three Broomsticks where they had promised to meet up with Remus and Peter.

'Haven't happened to see Ze, have you?' he asked Remus casually as he and James took seats at the small table.

Remus arched a brow. 'Yeah – she went down the street a half hour ago, looked to be in a bit of a strop – why?'

Sirius shrugged. 'Saw her go past and realised she might have turned in here. She looked a bit upset and I thought it might be about Clive and the whole date situation. If she was alone, I was going to invite her to join us,' he added, looking around into dark corners, just in case.

'Sorry – haven't seen her,' Peter said sadly. He liked Ze; she was nice.

'Didn't look like she was heading back up to the castle,' Remus added quietly. 'And whatever it was that was bothering her, I doubt it was to do with Clive. You know Ze – she's not the sort to get angry with her best mate because he's out with a girl. This was about something else,' he said sagely. 'My guess would be Rob and the bit at breakfast.'

'Right, well, as long as she's not plotting to maim our third chaser,' Sirius said with false cheer. The thought really running through his head was, as long as she's all right…

*.*.*.*.*

Ze was not all right. In fact, she was in a right strop, and there was no one to talk to about it. Clive was off, probably suffering through the horrors of an afternoon spent in Madame Puddifoot's House of Torture, and she wasn't sure she could tell anyone else how she felt. Aside from writing a letter to Jack, who would take the whole thing perfectly and probably give her loads of excellent advice, there was really nothing to do except wait. She'd been walking for nearly two hours, exploring the woods and the cliffs above the village. Not exactly a calming nature hike, but it had dulled the edge of fury down to a faint throb. Passing the gates with their winged boars (she'd never stopped to check whether they had warts or not) she was frightfully glad there were no other students toiling up the hill at the moment. She was definitely returning early, and as she reached the edge of the courtyard she let out a long sigh, glad that she would at least have a little time to herself. Her hope was short-lived, however, as she looked up to see the caretaker's creepy assistant, Filch, standing in the doorway beneath the clock tower, effectively blocking the entrance to the school. As she approached the scrappy looking cat at Filch's feet gave a scratchy, weird yowl.

'Are you Ze Meridian?' the man asked, yellowed teeth flashing in his sallow face./

'Er…yeah…' Ze began, suddenly ill at ease.

Filch's expression changed from one of dour boredom to sadistic delight. 'Professor McGonogall would like to see ye in her office,' he said with relish. 'Yer to go straight up. If you should decide to do a runner…' Filch trailed off, his fingers caressing what looked like a pair of manacles in a disturbingly dreamy manner.

'Not a problem,' Ze hastened to assure him. 'I'll just be going then,' and with that she darted round him and hurried up the stairs into the castle, her black mood miraculously growing blacker.

It was the stupid bra. It had to be. They'd been tossing it around at breakfast, making loads of noise, and then Rob had gone and put it on and jumped on the table. McGonogall, known far and wide for her tight-lipped (and Ze was fairly sure tight-arsed) propriety, had probably been livid when she found out that ladies' unmentionables had been on display at the Gryffindor table. It didn't take a genius to realise that as Ze was the source of the offending object, she would also be the recipient of the necessary lecture and punishment. Because really, today couldn't get any better, could it?

Brows lowered and eyes narrowed, Ze trudged her way down the corridor to McGonogall's office and paused in the doorway, knocking slightly when the older witch didn't look up. The knock alerted the teacher, who glanced up over the tops of her spectacles, her lips pursed. She was clearly in no mood for idle chatter. 'Well, what is it?' she snapped impatiently.

'I believe you asked to see me,' Ze ground out viciously. She reigned it in a bit at the end, remembering that this was a teacher she was talking to, but she couldn't completely eradicate the ire from her voice – any other day but today.

'Oh! My apologies Miss Meridian!' McGonogall was hastening to say, standing from behind her desk. 'My eyes aren't what they used to be and in those clothes – well, yes, thank for coming up so promptly – I had expected you to remain in the village for the afternoon, of course.'

Ze was in too much of a mood to enjoy the fact that the usually steely McGonogall was delightfully flustered. Instead she came to stand in front of the desk and muttered, 'Wasn't having the best of times, so I decided to come back early.'

'So I can see,' McGonogall replied, segueing back into her role as professor and head of Gryffindor with credible grace. 'I'm pleased Mr Filch could find you on such short notice.' The teacher resumed her seat, assuming what Ze privately thought of as her "I've just sat on a hedgehog" expression, which appeared only when there was serious disciplining to be done. 'A report of a rather alarming nature was brought to me a half hour ago, and as it concerns you, I thought it best that we speak immediately.' Ze shrugged, resisting the urge to scuff her foot on the floor: no point in admitting to things unless McGonogall already knew about them. Taking her silence for acquiescence, McGonogall plowed on. 'It seems that you were involved in an altercation in the village today – with a Ravenclaw by the name of Richard Marlowe?'

Ze's head snapped up. 'This isn't about the bra?' She immediately shut her mouth, changed direction, and rerouted the professor's attention. 'Er, I mean, yeah, I met up with Marlowe and a friend of his - Tom. Accidentally – I met up with them accidentally, I mean.'

'Hm, yes, so they suggested. They're not close friends of yours then?'

Ze snorted. 'Not likely – I only recognised Marlowe because his older brother played beater for Ravenclaw, wouldn't know him otherwise. Never seen the Tom fellow before, I don't think. I ran into Marlowe by accident – you know, walked into him,' she clarified, when it was clear the professor had taken her words at their colloquial value.

McGonogall nodded, her lips drawing together. 'And he took offence?' she prodded, clearly waiting for a full confession.

'Er, no – he actually said he recognised me as a Gryffindor, and could I settle a bet for him? And then he calls his friend over – that'd be Tom – and explains that the two of them have been arguing over whether or not Gryffindor have got a female player on their quidditch side, and Tom, who recognised me, sort of makes this face, and then Richard is telling me to tell Tom that he's mad – that Gryffindor haven't got a girl on their team.'

'And so you punched him?' McGonogall inquired, brows edging along her hairline.

'No,' Ze sneered. 'Tom told him to shut it, seeing as I was the girl quidditch player, and then Richard started telling me off, there was no way I was a girl. He even accused Tom of paying me half of their wager to pretend I was. He didn't believe me when I tried to set him straight.'

'So that's when you punched him? I see, well I'm afraid that the penalty will be a deduction of house points and a detention for fighting –'

'WHAT?' Ze growled. 'Excuse me, but I don't think you quite understand- '

'I understand perfectly Miss Meridian,' McGonogall said primly, now completely restored to her role as Supreme Tight-Arse of Hogwarts. 'And, while I must say that Mr Marlowe was quite disrespectful in his assumption that you were not, er, female, his actions did not deserve violence –'

Did he tell you how he figured out I wasn't lying? That he got a handful of something he wasn't expecting when he put his hands on me? 'Cos if he didn't, I'd like to "file a report" of my own!' Ze said hotly. 'Because I'm going to hazard a guess that he left that little detail out when he started on about how I attacked him without provocation.'

'He – he,' McGonogall took a moment to collect herself. 'Am I correct in assuming that you are accusing Mr Marlowe of…taking indecent liberties?'

'If you count grabbing a girls' tits in the middle of the high street "taking indecent liberties" then yeah, I am.'

For a moment she thought McGonogall would faint – whether over the idea of sexual harassment, or the use of the word "tits" she wasn't sure. 'I am very sorry Miss Meridian – I – we – I – were there witnesses?'

'Tom,' Ze said with a shrug. 'And to be fair, it wasn't what he thought it was – he thought he was going to be touching up a guy.'

McGonogall now appeared absolutely shell–shocked, and Ze decided that perhaps she should clarify that in thinking he was going to be "touching up a guy" Richard Marlowe had not necessarily been motivated by burning lust, homosexual or otherwise. 'He was trying to call my bluff – prove he knew I was really a boy,' Ze explained further. 'He's a bit of an ars- idiot,' she quickly amended, 'and he wasn't thinking. But I feel I was justified in punching him.'

'Yes, I'd say so,' McGonogall mumbled faintly. 'Were you planning to file a formal complaint – this is quite serious, you know – he could be expelled –'

'No!' Ze said very forcibly. 'It wasn't like that – look, I'm not defending him, but, er…he was just being, er…' she had been about to say "just being a boy" but that was hardly an excuse, and would be playing decidedly for the other team. 'He didn't think he was going to be grabbing anything, do you understand? He thought he'd just give me a shove – we'd all have a laugh, and then it'd be through. It upset me though, and I punched him, so we're really both equally at fault…' mentally she cursed, having just talked herself on the chopping block beside Marlowe in an effort to keep his arse in school.

'Oh, well, that's hardly, I mean…this situation…unprecedented…' McGonogall looked as though her head was swimming and Ze found herself feeling sorry for their head of house. And then McGonogall said, 'But I suppose we can forgive him for thinking you were a boy – easy mistake to make…'

And that was all she needed to hear. Ze, shooting the mumbling teacher a nasty look, turned round and left, correctly guessing that nothing would be done about it anyway.

*.*.*.*.*

'…and that's game six and you've lost again!' James crowed, pumping his fist in the air.

Rob was not so excited. 'You're cheating,' he moaned. 'You have to be – six games…'

'This isn't exploding snap, mate,' Sirius reminded him with a grin, nodding to the cards lying between Rob and James. 'He's a wily one,' he added bracingly. 'Got to watch his strategy.'

'There's strategy to "Pass the Hag"?' Peter asked sceptically, looking up from his comic.

'And that, my friend, is why you always loose,' James beamed at the shorter boy. 'Right, so – I believe I now get to name the task and you have to complete it,' he added wickedly, his hazel eyes alight with fiendish delight.

'Oh bloody hell,' Rob mumbled into his hands.

'So…' James considered, glancing round the common room, which was mostly empty. After a particularly nasty run in with Evans & Co. in the Three Broomsticks, the Marauders had retreated back to the castle so James could regroup and try to get his nose hair back to its normal length. Rob, also having lady troubles, had joined them, nursing a bite mark on his left hand and refusing to say anything about it. Sirius thought the teethmarks looked suspiciously pointed, but refrained from comment. 'So…' James repeated still searching for something horribly embarrassing to force Rob to do.

Again.

After five consecutive wins – and five consecutive humiliating punishments – James was running out of options. And then he realised that students were starting to stream back in from the village. 'Right,' he said, an evil smile twisting his lips. 'You've got to confess your undying love to, and then snog, the next person through the portrait hole.'

'That's awful!' Rob cried indignantly.

'That's life,' the Marauders chorused back, all chuckling. Really, these people and their dignity.

Rob swallowed visibly and trained his eyes on the portrait hole, waiting nervously. All four Marauders watched him watching, their expressions gleeful. They heard a muffled voice saying the password, and then the portrait slowly swung open. Rob clamped his eyes shut. The other four leaned forward, eyes sharp. And immediately burst out laughing.

'Oh piss,' Rob whispered breathlessly, his entire body shaking with fear. If the Marauders were laughing… 'Oh PISS,' he groaned louder as Homer Cobb wobbled into the common room, index finger inserted a shocking distance into his left nostril. All five boys stared in horror as he fished out an enormous boogey and proceeded to lick it off his finger. Rob actually gagged, and the other four burst into guffaws. 'Please,' Rob begged, on his knees before James. 'Please, don't make me do it – not him – oh Merlin, I'll die…'

'Alright, alright,' James managed through his laughter. 'The next girl through the portrait hole then.'

'Oh thank you,' Rob cried, hugging James' knees.

'But even if it's Dorcas – you've got to, right?'

'Right,' Rob promised, not having expected any leniency at all.

'Right,' James nodded, and they all sat back to wait. Again.

It didn't take long for another set of footsteps to approach, and another voice to murmur the password. 'Please don't be Dorcas,' Rob whispered as the portrait began to open. 'Please don't be Dorcas…'

*.*.*.*.*

Ze cracked her knuckles as she waited for the Fat Lady to finish her conversation with her pesky portrait paramour, Lord Eglantine. 'Excuse me, waiting here,' she said when it became clear that the Fat Lady was not paying her a bit of attention, too absorbed in Eglantine's foppish mumblings to notice the girl standing before her. 'You're a door, need to open…'

'Oh, they are so demanding,' The Fat Lady sighed to her swain, and turned an imperious eye on Ze. 'Password?'

'Frolicking Dollop,' Ze muttered, and the portrait Fat Lady humphed, muttering ungraciously. She was taking her time about swinging open, too. Ze resisted the urge to hit something – anything. Her temper was flaring horribly, and she desperately wished that Jack were by to talk to. But, of course, the best she could hope for was an empty dormitory in which to write a letter. Judging by the number of people she had spotted from the windows, she would be in the middle of the crowds returning from Hogsmeade, which meant hopefully no one would notice her. And probably Lily and Grace and Serena would still of off somewhere giggling. That thought at least was cheering. All she wanted to do was be alone. And maybe set that bloody bra on fire.

'You are aware that hats are prohibited inside school buildings,' a nasal voice said from behind Ze.

Ze's left eye twitched spasmodically. 'No Dorcas,' she ground out, turning to stare at the fish-eyed girl, trying not to focus on the prominent snaggle-tooth.

'Well,' Dorcas sniffed, her garish bow wobbling atop her head. 'You ought to careful of any of the prefects seeing you – I'm sure it's a detention for wearing a hat.'

Ze bit her tongue to keep from telling Dorcas that she'd seen both the Hufflepuff prefects in hats just minutes ago, happily tromping through the corridors. Instead she said, 'thanks, Dorcas,' and motioned for her to go through the portrait hole first.

Without so much as a 'thank you' Dorcas clambered through and tumbled out the other side. Pressing her fingers to her still-twitching eye, Ze mumbled an inarticulate prayer for peace before following. Halfway through the hole she registered that there were whistles and shouts echoing round the common room, and several people making very rude comments. 'What the bloody hell,' she mumbled, and crawled out the other side in time to see Rob, looking more miserable than a Dementor in a tutu, sweep Dorcas into a heated kiss. For a few moments Ze simply stared, her stomach awash with a roiling sick fascination as she watched Rob's hands shove against Dorcas's sloping shoulders, his eyes wide open and rolling like mad, his movements becoming progressively more desperate as time passed.

For her part, Dorcas seemed frozen, mouth hanging open and suctioned onto Rob's face. Choked, muffled noises were coming from Rob, strange grunts that sounded like "Help me! Help me!" Behind him, Ze could see the Marauders doubled over with howling laughter, their echoing mirth clueing the rest of the house in on the fact that this was yet another joke. She instinctively felt her eyes narrow, and for the first time in six years, she felt a sense of kinship with Dorcas: it wasn't fun to be the butt of the joke.

Stalking past Rob, she smacked him soundly on the back of the head and said, 'Keep it in the broom cupboard!' His lips separated from Dorcas's with an audible pop!, and he turned a worshipful gaze on her.

'Thank you, thank you,' he gasped.

'Oh sod off,' she snapped, shaking him off. Dorcas was watching him dreamily and Ze felt a momentary stab of pity for the girl – she hadn't yet realised Rob had only been taking the piss.

'Zazzer?' Rob asked, sounding utterly confused as she stalked away from him towards the girls' staircase.

Just as she stepped foot on the first stair a third year gave her a nasty glance, and said in a very carrying voice, 'Oi – you can't go up there – that's the girls' side!'

Ze's shoulders snapped taut and her head whipped around like a viper on a mouse. 'I am a girl!' she yelled, her voice cutting through all conversation in the room, drawing every eye. 'I am a GIRL, in case you had missed it, at some point over the last seven years. I've been living up there' she pointed towards the girls' dormitories, 'since before you knew what Hogwarts was and I wear skirts to classes and I am sick of everyone thinking I'm a boy! Are you really that blind? Or are you just so fucking stupid you can't see what's in front of your faces? Honestly – you people – having short hair and a bloke for a best friend and playing sport does not mean I'm a boy! For Merlin's sake – I've got tits!' she shouted, gesturing to her chest.

'Are you gonna show them?' a fourth year asked eagerly, lifting his camera.

Ze shot him a glare that took ten years off his life and probably reduced his chances of procreating by half. 'Oh sod off,' she snarled, her gaze sweeping the room, not sparing her quidditch mates. 'The lot of you.' And then she whirled back round and stormed up the stairs.

A/N - my apologies for the long wait between chapters - life has been strange for the past few weeks, but everything seems to have calmed down for the moment! hopefully this chapter and the next two will be out in quick succession (depending, of course, on the length of the queue...) so look forward to loads of plotting and strategy - not to mention bizarre jokes and Dorcas being...Dorcas.

as always, my thanks to all who've read and all who reviewed - you make life worth living!

~cheers!


	8. Logical reasoning and Other Theraputic M

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 8: Logical Reasoning and Other Thereaputic Measures

The entire common room listened to the door to the girls' seventh slam shut, and then burst into commotion. Rob was looking dazed and confused as he shook off Dorcas, who promptly burst into tears and sprinted for the door. No one noticed – it was too common an occurrence to compete with Ze Meridian's sudden outburst. Slowly, meeting up with Zeke and Allister Wood, who had arrived just in time to catch the action, Rob made his way back over to the fireplace where the Marauders were still seated, shell-shocked. 'So…' James said slowly when the others had sat down.

'So,' Zeke agreed, his voice quiet. 'Seems like summat happened between yesterday and today.'

'I don't think –' Sirius began, but Rob spoke over him: 'What's got into her? Think its that time of the month?' He glanced around for laughs, but was met with only perplexed silence. 'Just joking,' he mumbled, and settled down into the couch.

'What do you think happened to have her go off like that?' Peter asked blankly, eyes on the girl's stairs.

'I think the more important question is, who's going to have a word with her?' Remus said quietly, lips turned down at the corners. 'She's not been herself since breakfast, and frankly I'm worried – someone needs to ask her what's wrong.'

They all looked round for Clive, the obvious choice, but he was nowhere to be seen – still out on his date. They eyed one another speculatively, and slowly all gazes came to rest on Sirius. 'What?' he asked sharply, a pit opening in his stomach.

'Well, aside from Clive, you know her best,' James shrugged. 'I mean, you two have been friendly lately… And you've got the most experience with, er, female problems,' he added, his ears turning pink.

'Eh?' Peter squeaked, looking wide-eyed at Sirius. 'But I thought he was a –'

'Prongs doesn't mean Sirius has "female problems",' Remus explained kindly. 'He just means that Sirius has the most experience with upset members of the opposite sex.'

'Oooooh,' Peter sighed, sounding relieved. 'Right then.'

An upset member of the opposite sex - that pretty much describes Grace, Sirius thought glumly, surprised that he didn't feel much more than a slight pang. Instead he glanced up at the girls dormitory, his mind very much wrapped around the small figure probably collapsed in sobs on a bed. He hated tears – they were worse than terrifying. In fact, they scared him more than large spiders or clowns, and that was saying quite a bit. But it was Ze…and he couldn't help but feel for her. 'Right,' he sighed. 'I'll just go on up, shall I?'

'Good man,' Rob applauded, clapping him on the back as though Sirius were going off to war rather than a dormitory.

'Tell her we're all worried?' Remus added, his eyes clouded with concern.

Sirius, unable to think of anything to say, just nodded and stood. He hated talking with girls. He was horrible at it – completely stuffed it up every time. That had been one of the most appealing things about Grace: she had talked to him, eliminating the incredibly awkward drivel that always seemed to spout out of his mouth when he was faced with a female. But this is Ze – she's not like the others, he reminded himself, taking a bit of courage from the thought as he slipped into a corner and checked for watching eyes. None. Sighing heavily, Sirius cast a hasty disillusionment charm, clamped his wand between his teeth, and morphed into his animagus form. If anyone noticed him disappearing from plain sight, they didn't mention it. Padding as quietly as possible across the rug, Sirius gained the girls' staircase, and without pause trotted up it. So it wasn't difficult to break in. So he wasn't performing great acts of strength and heroism to come to Ze's aid – it was still bloody awful to know what waited for him on the other side of the door. This definitely wasn't what he planned on doing for the evening.

He ought to be playing chess with Remus by the fire, or helping James plot their next great adventure. Instead, he was gnawing on his wand and ignoring the bite of fleas to talk with a girl who, when he finally got to her, might try to rip his head (or other, more important, bits off his anatomy) off. Not comforting. With a canine sigh Sirius paused on the stone landing outside the girls' seventh, and flowed back into human form, making sure he was as far from the stairs as possible. The trick to this was to actually be standing on the stone that formed the doorjamb – only then did the stairs remain solid and silent. That little jewel of information had required a bit of research to work out… but it had been worth it. Retrieving his wand from his mouth and swirling his tongue a bit to get rid of the taste of ebony, he gingerly put his ear to the door. He couldn't hear any telltale sobbing, but more importantly, he couldn't hear anyone moving around inside the room – it was fairly essential that no one see the door open and close of it's own accord. Invisibility was not a guarantee of secrecy.

He gave it thirty seconds, and after no footsteps or other noises, he eased the door open and peeked in. Five beds, arranged in a semi-circle, exactly as they were on the boys' side. Except this room was neat and tidy, and smelled of faintly flowery perfumes and clean laundry. No wonder girls always smelled so nice… But he couldn't allow himself to be distracted, no, not at all. His eyes searched the room, wondering if perhaps she had retreated to the loo, a place even he was hesitant about going. But no, she was here, lying on her bed, a pillow over her face.

At first he thought she must be crying, muffling her sobs with the pillow, but he quickly realised that while she was moving, it wasn't the rhythmic rock or tremble of sobs. It was a spasmodic twitching, accompanied by closed-fist punches to the mattress every so often. Definitely not tears – more like poorly repressed rage. Well, that he could handle – he hoped. Opening the door a trifle wider her slipped inside and shut it carefully behind him. This was not his first time in the girls' dormitory, and he doubted it would be his last – he just prayed that this was the only visit of this nature he ever made. Careful to steer clear of Dorcas's immaculately arranged belongings, he took a few tentative steps towards Ze's bed.

The area surrounding it was a mystery to him - he had never examined it before, despite having burgled the place a time or ten. Those adventures had involved borrowing items of varying degrees of intimacy – most often, Lily Evan's diary. James claimed it was the only way he would ever know how Evans truly felt. Sirius privately felt that Evans' unwavering disapproval ought to be a good indicator, but James never listened. As it was, in all the times he had snuck in to pinch diaries, knickers, and, on one notable occasion, a love letter written by none other than Remus Lupin, Sirius had never invaded the space that definitely belonged to Ze. He simply couldn't bring himself to do it. Ze was an equal, unlike the rest of the girls, and something about her told Sirius that she liked her privacy. So he bypassed her knicker drawer and never bothered looking for a diary. As for love letters, well, he doubted she'd even read them if they were written to her.

He was just close enough now to examine the area around her bed, and wasn't surprised to see that while it was tidier than the area around his own, it was by no means neat. Clothes spilled out of her wardrobe, a tangle of soft t-shirts and worn trousers that she obviously never bothered to sort through. Her bedside table was a dumping ground for the little things that collect in pockets – scraps of parchment, bits of rubbish, a few knuts, a pencil nub. It also supported an alarm clock, an unlit lamp, and what appeared to be an album of photos, the cover of which was a simple frame. Inside it was a picture of Ze and a bloke with blond hair. Judging by Ze's appearance, the photo had been taken relatively recently, and Sirius had to assume that the boy was a muggle, considering the picture wasn't moving. They were wearing sport kits of some sort, shorts and large square shirts, black with white trimming. Mud-splattered, backed by a field of grass, they were caught in motion, throwing themselves at one another, obviously in a fit of joy. Both were laughing, their faces glowing brilliantly. Ze was hurling herself at the boy, one fist raised in victory, the other reaching out to catch him round the shoulders. Neither of her feet were on the ground. The guy was reaching out to catch her, his head thrown back, a wild grin stretching across his face. Sirius could manfully admit that he was quite good–looking, and that he appeared to have Ze's undivided attention. The ecstatic expression on her face drew a faint pang of envy in Sirius's chest.

But more than Ze herself, Sirius wondered what it was like to have anyone look at you like that – with so much joy and light and life inside her, burning her up until all she wanted was to be near you. Wondered what it was like to have Ze be that someone. He was close enough now to see that she wasn't crying at all, that her hands were periodically clenching in time to a seemingly endless flow of muted noise…slowly he realised she was cursing - a long uninterrupted stream of epithets, some of which had him nodding, impressed. She was very creative. And very, very angry. So angry that he seriously contemplated turning tail and fleeing – better to face the rest together than this harridan. But given that she had a very good reason to be cursing…

The only question now was how to approach her. He doubted she wanted to be seen in a twitching fit with a pillow over her face, cursing like a madwoman. Should he clear his throat and hope she wasn't too embarrassed, or should he sneak out and knock on the door to give her a moment to compose herself? Deciding on the door knocking solution, he turned to slip back out, but his foot scuffed the stone and Ze sat straight up, staring beadily around.

'Hello?' Sirius stood stock-still. 'Who's there?' she asked after a moment. Sirius attempted to back away, but was foiled by Dorcas's trunk. A loud thumping arose as he tried to stay standing, and Ze leapt off her bed, drawing her wand. 'It's obvious someone's here, so…reveal yourself or I'll start hexing everything I can reach.'

Despite the fact that it was clear she had no idea where he was, Sirius didn't doubt that she would manage to hit him long before he got to the door. And he had wanted to talk to her anyway – maybe this was the best. Slowly he raised his wand and drew off the disillusionment charm, returning to normal visibility. 'Er…sorry?' he offered when she just stared at him.

Her eyes were dark, and he could swear over-bright, but she remained impassive. Finally, turning her back and moving towards her bed, she said 'if you're here to steal knickers, take them and get out.'

'I'm actually here to talk to you,' he said very quietly, stepping after her.

Her shoulders stiffened. 'I'm not in any mood to be patronised.'

'I'm not here to patronise you,' he promised. 'I'm here to see if you're alright.' There was something about the cast of her shoulders, so slight and narrow now that she had shed her sweatshirt, that brought back the memory of how fragile she had felt when they collided. At his words her shoulders jerked, then hunched slightly, and she raised a hand to rub the back of her neck.

'I'm fine,' she finally said, not turning to look at him.

'Good,' he said softly, taking a step closer. 'Hope you don't mind me sneaking up – we were worried.' She snorted derisively, and he frowned. 'We were – honestly. Your speech gave Mo- Remus grey hairs.' She didn't chuckle at this, and he rolled his eyes at himself. You're pathetic mate – just give it up now. But he couldn't stop his treacherous mouth from opening, from more ridiculous things spilling out. 'And James is actually looking serious and Rob, well, Rob is being Rob, but what can you expect?'

'What can you expect indeed,' she muttered darkly, and moved back towards her bed. 'You can let them know I'm alright,' she said, not quite over her shoulder. 'I'm not planning on killing any of you in your sleep, although the thought is tempting.'

'I know,' he replied ruefully without thinking. 'I'd have murdered us all this morning at the breakfast table, if I were you.'

This did have her turning to look at him, her head tilted slightly to the side. 'Why?'

He just stared at her, suddenly back on familiar ground and not nervous at all. 'Because we were being right stupid gits – Rob especially. Running around in your – in your –'

'Bra,' she supplied, a faint smile tugging at her lips.

'Right, that's the one – anyway, it wasn't very mature, not to mention dead embarrassing – for both of you. But I don't really think Rob can be humiliated, so it was really just you…' he trailed off, and looked up at her, black hair hanging over his eyes in an expression that was all the more captivating because it was completely uncalculated. 'I'm sorry,' he added softly. 'I really am.'

This was the moment in the conversation when Grace would have struck a pose, doing her best impression of a martyr, and shed loads of pretty, silvery tears. But Ze was not Grace, not by a long ways, and instead of bursting into tears, she just sighed. 'Thanks,' she said quietly. 'That means quite a lot.' And then she sank down onto the bed, pulled her knees up tailor style, and hugged her pillow. She looked vaguely dissatisfied, and so very…forlorn. That was the word he wanted – forlorn, as though someone had just told her the world would never be right again.

'Are you –' he stopped himself. She was very obviously not "okay", and he wanted to kick himself for being such a prat. 'You're not right,' he finally blurted out, unable to stop himself. 'You haven't been for a few days – something's eating at you. What is it? Its not Clive,' he added when she gave him an odd look. 'Or, its not just Clive – something's going on with you.' She puffed out her cheeks slightly and expelled a breath. You haven't got to tell me or anything – not if you don't want to – but, er, I'd like to know…'

She eyed him for a moment, as though trying to decide, and then she lifted one shoulder in a shrug. 'I dunno,' she sighed. 'I've been a bit off lately, I guess – I just – ' she broke off, chewing on her lip. 'It's never bothered me before, not like it has been since start of term, you know? For so long it didn't matter how you lot treated me, and I'm not trying to say that I don't fancy you as friends anymore, because that's not it at all I just –' This time the sigh was more of a frustrated groan, and Sirius found himself sitting on the bed opposite her, not quite sure how he'd got there. 'It's like it just went tits up, all of a sudden,' she continued. 'Like I just woke up – except that it isn't, I dunno Sirius, I don't know how to explain it.'

'But you're angry with us?'

She flopped backward onto the bed, mumbled something under her breath, and then sat back up again. 'It's more complicated than that,' she explained slowly. 'It's like I'm angry with – something bigger. I'm angry with whoever made up the rule that girls can't be mad about sport, and I'm angry with the bastard who said its males against females and I'm angry with – with – with society for saying that I can't be who I am and be a girl. It's bollocks!' She paused, staring hard at her pillow before looking up at him, her eyes losing none of their intensity. 'So its not really you, yeah? It's…you in the…bigger sense. Like you're the people that are making me angry, but its not really your fault?'

Sirius wasn't quite sure he saw – at least, not completely. He had a feeling that there was an internal monologue running through Ze's head that would enlighten him though, so he nodded. 'A bit,' he allowed. 'Like you're angry with us because we're the, er, manifestations of the problem – but you can't really have fixed it until you've taken on the whole world. Or something,' he added, feeling that he hadn't made a very sound point.

But she was nodding. 'Yeah, it's like that. It's that – well, okay, I've always been like this, see, and my best mate from home is a muggle and we've always been together, for as long as I can remember. And we play football – that's muggle sport, well, the best muggle sport – and when we started we were too little for anyone to notice that I wasn't a boy. I had short hair and all, and my Dad didn't care that I wasn't a boy like the rest, he just knew I loved to play, so me and Jacko – that's my friend – we just did it. And I never got close to any of the girls my age because they were always in doing stuff I didn't care about, so I just, I dunno – I never noticed. And it went on, just like that, when I got to Hogwarts.

I met you lot, quidditch, Clive – he's not Jacko, but he's still a guy – and I didn't even know how to talk to people like Serena and Grace. And Lily, well, she's just different. And Dorcas… bugger. But I didn't know how to make friends with them – it was like I'd missed all the- the training and wotnot, and there's nothing I can do about it now because it's too late.'

'So you want to be friends with them?' Sirius asked, now completely confused.

This earned another sigh, and he grimaced faintly. 'No – it just – I want to make a point, but I'm not sure how because I can't precisely explain it to myself – '

'Right well, just, I dunno, talk until you make sense,' he suggested, settling back against the bedpost and folding his arms behind his head.

She stared at him. 'Are you joking?'

For the first time in what felt like hours, he smiled. 'Course not – I'm being understanding. Besides, this is loads better than watching James and Rob play "pass the hag".' It was an attempt to cheer her up and it worked: she snorted with laughter and leant back.

'You don't have to sit up here,' she said after a moment. 'This can hardly be –'

'Oi,' he said, nudging her leg with his foot, 'if I didn't want to be sitting here, I wouldn't be. Tell me what's bothering you, and we'll sort it out.'

'Right…' She thought for a few minutes, and he just sat, thinking about the fact that this conversation was requiring more mental energy than half the things he discussed in the boys' seventh. Well, unless they were planning a prank… But still, it was nice to puzzle over something that didn't involve homework or dosing the Slytherins' with Confounding Elixir. And Ze was loads easier to talk to than any other girl he knew, even when she wasn't making sense. Which was rare, he realised – he'd never got the impression that she was saying one thing and meaning another, which was often the case with…other girls of his acquaintance.

'Okay,' she said suddenly, 'okay, I think I can explain it.'

He jerked himself out of his reverie and nodded. 'Right, let's have it then.'

She settled back and met his eyes, her own narrowed slightly and very concentrated. 'It's a bit like this: for a long time, we were all the same. We thought about quidditch, muddled through homework, played pranks, all that stuff. And then, one day, you lot looked around and said "oi – there's girls!" and suddenly there was this whole part of your lives that I couldn't really be a part of. But it didn't register then – I'd noticed boys loads of times before, so I thought "right, girls," and just kept on. And you kept on, and it never bothered me to hear you talk about them, and it never bothered you to talk about them in front of me – like I was just one of the blokes. Which was fine, because in a way I am just one of the blokes.

No one noticed I was different – not you, and not other people, and so while you were off with girls, and comparing notes as it were, I was realising that I wasn't quite comfortable listening to you anymore. Not about that, at least. Because I couldn't relate, see, I hadn't got the same sort of experience, because no one noticed me. And I didn't try to make them notice – I was content just being the way I was. So it sort of built up, slow and in the back of my head, and I ignored it, and then those stupid Hufflepuff's flirted with me, and then Rob at breakfast, and that tosspot Richard Marlowe – I just – snapped.'

Sirius rather wanted to ask her about the flirting Hufflepuff's and Richard Marlowe, but decided not to interrupt. She had a faraway look, and it was clear that this was helping, so he just let her go on.

'I am a girl – a normal, ordinary girl. But no one can see me that way, because that would mean that everything they think about girls would be wrong. You can't see me as a bird because then, somehow, I'd be separate but equal – you'd have to admit that girls aren't indecipherable because you'd never had any trouble deciphering me. It wouldn't be boys versus girls, it would people you understood and people you didn't. It's not that I'm so different, it's just that everyone wants us all to be the same – girls like this and boys like that, and me in the middle, which is nowhere.' Sirius was puzzling this out, afraid to admit that it made sense, and knowing that he didn't quite understand anyway. And then Ze finished it off with: 'And it all goes back to sex.'

'Er, what was that last bit?'

'Sex,' she repeated, as though this were perfectly obvious. 'Not that everyone is doing it, really - just that everyone obsesses over it. Honestly – you do. It's all you lot talk about, and its all these nutters,' she gestured around to indicate her dorm-mates, 'talk about, and everyone – even the third years – sit round and giggle over. And there's nothing wrong with that – it's normal. Hormones and all that rubbish. Girls get it a bit earlier, so they start wanting boyfriends, because that's the first step, and then boys notice and they start wanting to snog in broom cupboards because that's the first step – but really what everyone's thinking about is sex, they're just reacting to it the way they've always been told they would. Girls are supposed to be "good" and shy and hold out and boys are supposed to be pervy and gagging for it. So everyone acts the way they're supposed to, and if you're a bit different – if you're like me, or Dorcas – you get written out of the order because you're holding everyone else up.'

Still not precisely clear on how they'd got from mistaken gender to sexual awakening, Sirius did know that he had no idea what to say about it, so he just went with, 'I'm not sure how Dorcas fits in.'

'She's odd – she's more concerned with rules and school than she is with anything else. She doesn't want a boyfriend – well, I don't think she wants one – and so no one else really understands why she acts the way she does. I'm not saying she's right,' Ze hastened to add, 'she's definitely not easy to live with, but just because she's a bit behind everyone else in the mad dash for carnal exploration doesn't mean she's not ahead in some other areas.'

Sirius arched a brow: he was beginning to see the point. 'So where do you fit in with all of this?'

She smiled ruefully. 'Nowhere. That's the problem. In a way I'm like Dorcas – I'm more interested in sport than having it off in the Astronomy tower. But Dorcas is an openly acknowledged female. I haven't even got that. All my friends are guys, and I adore you, but you've relegated me to this place where I'm not really anything – I'm not a girl, because then you'd have to rate me, and I'm not a boy, because I can't share the changing room. I don't want to date you because I know you too well, and I don't want to be friends with this lot,' again she gestured to the dormitory at large, 'because I don't understand them. I'm a mutant – who I am mentally and who I am physically don't match up with either group.'

'You're not a mutant,' he automatically replied.

'Well no, I haven't got three arms or a second nose or anything, but you see my point.'

He nodded slowly. 'Yeah, I think I do. I'm still a bit foggy on some of the particulars, but I understand what you're saying. It's rather disturbing,' he added, frowning. 'I'd never thought of it that way, but I think you've got the right of it. How'd you come up with that, anyway?' he asked suddenly, struck by how clever – and how frankly insightful – she was. He'd never have dissected it like that, mostly because it had never occurred to him to try.

She just shrugged. 'When you're looking in on everything, it makes a bit more sense,' she explained. 'I've got an ear in both worlds, as it were – I'm always with you, and I have to live with them. You hear things. I'd never tried to put it in words before toady though,' she added. 'Before it was just taking up space in my head.'

'Well I think it's brilliant. Now who is Richard Marlowe?'

Her face instantly darkened. 'Asshole,' she mumbled, her hands curling into fists. Sirius noted that her left knuckles were red and slightly swollen, and his stomach tightened. 'He's a Ravenclaw,' Ze was saying, 'sixth year. You'll remember his brother – played beater for their side until he left school.' Sirius nodded, remembering a tall, faintly good-looking boy with a smarmy smile. 'I was in…a bit of a strop when I went down to the village this morning – wasn't watching where I was going and just ploughed right into him – Richard, that is. He said he recognised me, and then called his friend over – seems they'd had a bet on whether or not Gryffindor's side had a girl playing chaser.'

'Oh bollocks,' Sirius murmured, knowing where this was going.

'I said yes – me, and he laughed. Said I couldn't be a girl, said I was taking the piss, had a joke going with his friend. I didn't take it well,' she added, jaw working, clearly still bitter. 'Told him I wasn't lying, he said bollocks and shoved me – put his hands right on my chest –'

'What?!' Sirius all but bellowed, sitting forward, already plotting ways to beat the stuffing out of the younger boy.

'Pipe down,' she ordered, 'We don't want the whole house knowing you're up here. He didn't do it on purpose,' she added. 'He honestly thought it was a joke – of course, I wasn't feeling so funny, so I punched him in the face.'

Sirius grinned. 'Well done you.'

She smiled back for a moment, but the expression faded quickly. 'Course, when I got back to school McGonagall had already heard – called me up to her office to tell me off, and then I had to explain. Think I took about ten years off her life, though, when I told her what had really happened.'

'Too right you did,' Sirius sniggered. 'Wait until James hears –' he broke off when Ze winced. 'Er, should I not tell him then?'

'No, no, it's not that,' she said quickly. 'I just…well, they're angry with me, aren't they?' she asked softly, glancing up at him, twisting the duvet in her fingers. 'The rest, I mean – I shouted at them – I was a right stroppy cow, too.'

'Well, yeah,' he allowed, 'but they're not angry. They're just…worried. Rems wanted me to pass that on – the rest too. They were surprised, is all – you never shout. Well, off the pitch,' he amended, and was rewarded with a small smile. 'Wot's the matter?'

'I just…I know its stupid, but who will I sit with if they're angry with me? It's not like I've got loads of friends, and I can't just look at them and try to explain –what would I say? "Treat me like a girl, or else?"' She shook her head. 'That's bollocks.'

'Oh, I think they got the message,' Sirius replied. 'About you being a girl, I mean. The whole school will have, by now. And you don't have to explain – not completely, if you don't want to.'

'Of course I want to,' she frowned. 'What's the point in saying something if you're not going to make it clear? And it will change things – you know, with the team. Probably not for the better, either. I don't want to be responsible for that.'

'Well, I think you already are. Look, if you're unhappy, you have the right to say something about it. And we're your friends, so it's our responsibility to try and sort it out, whatever it might be.' She was eyeing him quizzically, and he floundered a bit, trying to find the right words. 'This is going to sound ridiculous, but we, er, care about you – you know, and, um, we'll work it out, right? You're important Ze – I just want you to be happy.'

She eyed him for a moment, and then her face split into a grin, the sort that lights an entire person up, until she glowed with it. 'Aren't you the dog's bollocks – that was positively sweet Sirius. Didn't know you had it in you.' Sirius felt himself blush, and it was her turn to nudge his leg with her foot. 'I'm just taking the piss – but it was nice of you to say, and I appreciate it.'

'Right, well, don't go telling Rob,' he mumbled, half-joking.

'Please,' Ze snorted, 'what was that with him snogging Dorcas, anyway?'

'Pass the hag,' Sirius replied. 'Sixth round he lost – he had to kiss whoever came through the portrait hole next.'

Ze shook her head. 'Amusing, but pretty horrible – I'd bet money that that was Dorcas's first kiss.'

Sirius winced. 'Rob? Blech. Never thought I'd say it, but I feel sorry for her.'

Ze laughed, her brows dancing. 'I dunno – he's well fit – I wouldn't mind –'

'Don't even say it,' he threatened, laughing.

Something sounded on the stairs and they both froze. 'Might be a good time for you to hide,' Ze said wisely, and thumped him on the top of the head with her wand.

Sirius looked down to see nothing but a streaky afterglow where his body ought to be. 'Right – meet you in the common room for dinner?' he whispered, easing off the bed and moving as quietly as possible.

Ze nodded once as the door swung open behind him, Lily and Grace filing through, chatting. 'Right,' she breathed, and he slipped away, hurrying across the room to slide through the door as it swung shut. He passed within a foot of Grace and she never even lifted her head.

It wasn't until Sirius was transforming into a dog that he realised he hadn't noticed Grace either.

A/N

thanks so much for reading - a review would be much appreciated!


	9. Like Taking Candy From a Rob?

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 9: Like Taking Candy From a…Rob?

Ze had every intention of going down to sort things out. In fact, after her chat with Sirius, she felt as though she were obligated to. That, and it was misery being up in the dormitory with Grace and Lily faffing about. After the door shut behind an invisible Sirius (if he had used the door at all – she wasn't quite sure, as there was no loud clanging coming from the stairs) Ze rolled off of her bed and rummaged in her wardrobe, coming up with jeans that weren't muddy and a relatively clean top.

'This doesn't make me look lumpy, does it?' Grace asked, pivoting in front of the mirror, her torso draped in shimmering layers of lavender stuff. Ze, grateful that the question hadn't been put to her (lumpy was a polite understatement), tried not to stare as she sorted out precisely what the cloud of fabric was.

'Well…' Lily began, clearly wanting to keep the peace and disguising her dislike behind a façade of contemplation. 'You know, they're not for everyone…' she trailed, and Grace shot her a narrow-eyed glance in the glass. 'Of course,' Lily continued with an almost-believable shrug, 'you've got the figure to wear anything.'

'Mmmm,' Grace murmured, turning again to examine her back which, Ze realised as she turned, was left almost bare thanks to an enormous slit down her spine. It seemed the shirt was held together only at the nape of the neck and the waist. No wonder Grace thought it looked nice. 'Do you think I look like a fairy?'

You look like a demented lampshade, Ze thought uncharitably, just as Lily replied, 'Er, a bit, yeah.'

'Good,' Grace said concisely. 'It's perfect then.'

I don't even want to know, Ze thought with a roll of her eyes as she gathered up her things and moved to cross the room and have a shower. She was halfway there when Lily glanced up and smiled at her. 'Have a nice time in the village?' she asked politely, her eyes open and curious, her expression friendly.

She's being nice to me, Ze registered, at the same time her inner cynic sniggered: a nice time – what's she on about? 'Er…' Ze managed to get out before Grace's sneering tones interrupted.

'Of course she didn't,' the blond girl intoned, her lips twisted in a sly imitation of a smile, her eyes fairly glowing with malice. 'Didn't you hear – she got into a punch up with Richard Marlowe.'

'What?' Lily's hair flew as she whipped her head from Ze to Grace and back. 'Why?'

Don't say anything cheeky, don't say anything cheeky – 'He misunderstood the implications of my having a broomstick.'

Both girls stared at her. 'What?'

'Nothing. Never mind – going to go take a shower now,' Ze hurried to add, backing away from Lily's perplexed glance and Grace's hideous lavender shirt. 'See you later –' backing into the loo she shut the door firmly behind her and leaned against it, resisting the urge to thunk her head a time or two. The calm and ease that Sirius's visit had restored were suddenly gone – and just when she needed them most. If Grace was already laughing at her, the rest of the school wouldn't be far behind. And then, of course, there was the rest of the team to explain things to…

Maybe she just needed a long shower…a really long shower…like, say, forever.

*.*.*.*.*

The moment Sirius, freshly returned to visibility and his human form, stepped out from behind the drapes and into the common room, he knew something wasn't right. And not just a chair out of place or James wearing his lucky socks again – something… dangerous. Slowly he approached the group before the fire, unable to see what their hands were doing as their backs were turned and several people had gathered round to watch. But he could certainly hear them.

'Oi! He's done it again!'

'That's seven!'

'Look at the size of that one!'

'Disgusting.'

'Uggh, I think I'm going to be sick –'

Sirius leapt back just in time. James, shoving through the crowd of people, came pelting over the couch and toward the window. He slammed the pane open just in time to heave the entire contents of his mouth (and what sounded like his stomach as well) out onto the courtyard below. Sirius was close enough to the window to hear an outraged shout drift up, and he winced in sympathy for whoever had been unlucky enough to be crossing the flags below.

'And that's ten!' someone shouted from before the fire, and the entire room burst into cheers. Sirius glanced back to see a very smug looking Rob, his mouth stained with something that Sirius fervently hoped was chocolate, raising his arms into the air as his admirers began a round of "for he's a jolly good fellow".

'What's going on?' Sirius asked, conjuring a glass of water and passing it to the heaving James.

James, glancing back and looking more than a bit green around the gills, accepted the water with a dull "thanks". Sirius watched as his friend took a few cautious sips before gargling a mouthful and spitting it, once again, onto the ground below. Sirius winced, but there were no complaints this time: whoever it had been below had caught on. 'Contest,' James explained wanly, vanishing the glass and nodding his head toward Rob, who was now doing some sort of victory jig.

Sirius eyed the brown stains on James's lips and felt his own stomach turn a bit. 'Do I want to know?'

'Cockroach clusters,' James whispered, his face ghostly pale. 'Whoever got to ten first…'

'Uuuuh – that's mingin',' Sirius moaned, turning his head and swallowing down a rise of bile. 'I'll never think of him the same way again,' he added, shaking his head as he watched Rob strut about before the fire.

'I'll never think of me the same way again,' James moaned, clutching his stomach and turning back to the window.

Sirius, reminding himself that James had done just this for him in past disasters, manfully waited for his friend to finish spewing onto innocent bystanders. Of course, in Sirius's case, it had been drink and not cockroach infested sweets, but…

'Think that's done it,' James gasped a few moments later, rubbing his chest and shutting the window.

'Er,' Sirius said, pushing the window back open, 'just in case.'

James hiccoughed, blanched at the aftertaste, and nodded. 'Good thinking.'

'Why?' Sirius asked curiously, staring at his friend with wonder.

James shrugged. 'Dunno – seemed the thing to do at the time. And I thought he was taking the mickey when he said they were real cockroach clusters. You know, his mum'd sent them – whose mum would do that?'

'Well, if it would be anyone's…' Sirius trailed off, and James slumped his shoulders.

'Yeah, suppose you're right.' He was just opening his mouth to add something when Rob leapt over the couch and, grinning broadly, moved towards them.

'Looks like it's your turn,' he cackled, shaking James's shoulder.

'Not a good ide-' Sirius began, but Rob was already yelping and leaping back as James shoved his head out the window again and retched. 'Don't think they agreed with him,' Sirius explained to Rob, who was looking a bit off colour himself. 'Probably taste worse the second time, too,' he added, and had the pleasure of seeing Rob blanche.

But then an evil grin stretched across the younger boy's face, and Sirius felt himself go cold. When Rob smiled like that… 'Might want to hurry and clean your teeth, Potter,' Rob jibbed. 'Doubt even Dorcas would want you snogging her tasting like sick.'

'What?' Sirius asked blankly.

'Auuughghghgh,' James groaned, leaning against the wall as Remus approached.

'Since James lost, it's Rob's dare,' Remus explained, looking resigned. 'We told him not to, but…'

'But don't worry – he hasn't got to snog Dorcas. She's disappeared. He's got to snog Lily.' Peter, who had followed Remus over from the fire, was nodding rapidly, as though this were a relief.

'He's not going to,' Sirius said flatly. 'Even he wouldn't – not after last time –'

'And just this afternoon, too,' Peter put in with a sad shake of his head.

'Won't he ever learn?'

'Apparently not,' Remus sighed. 'You'd think that one telling off a day would do him – especially after the pub but –

'

'What happened in the pub?' Allister asked, joining them by the window and watching as Rob needled James.

'Evans was ordering drinks,' Sirius explained, 'and James was, as usual, enjoying the view. And since her hands were full…'

'No,' Allister said disbelievingly.

'Yeah,' Sirius replied with yet another sigh. 'Two butterbeers, right down the front.'

'And then she hit him with a Nose-hair Knotter,' Peter added with relish. 'It was down to his chin before we got him sorted.'

'He still think they're getting married?' Allister asked sceptically.

'He says five years,' Remus shrugged.

'Got the ring picked out and everything,' Sirius added, shaking his head. 'And every time he tries to snog her, she punches him.'

'With butterbeer,' Peter chimed in for emphasis.

'Poor bastard,' Allister murmured, shaking his head.

'Amen,' Remus, Sirius, and Peter chorused in reply.

'Oi – here she comes,' an intrepid fourth-year hissed, pointing none-too-subtly at the girls' staircase, where Lily and Grace were just emerging.

'Ughghgphhh,' James mumbled, wiping at his mouth stupidly.

'Well go on,' Rob laughed, poking James in the shoulder. 'Go on.'

'Rob, honestly – he's sick –' Remus began, but Rob just laughed manically and hauled James upright, pushing him across the floor.

'James –' Sirius began, but Rob interrupted him, saying, 'fair's fair Black!'

'S'right,' James managed, straightening himself out and running his fingers nervously through his hair. 'I can…' he glanced over at Lily, his face filled with longing and no small amount of fear. 'I can…do it….'

'Prongs, she'll only be angry with you –'

'Marauders always keep their word,' James reminded him, a bit of the colour coming back into his face as he spoke.

'Alright,' Sirius replied. 'If you're sure…' You poor, stupid bastard…

Lily and Grace were almost to the portrait hole now, probably on their way to an early supper as it was just going dark. If they saw James wobbling their way, they didn't let on, at least not until James called, 'Oi, Evans!' in a voice that was much feebler than usual.

Sirius saw Lily's shoulders stiffen, but when she turned back she wore a smile – albeit a tight one. 'Yes, Potter?'

'Er…you look…dressed,' he managed, glancing down at her body, which was swathed in several layers of clothing to ward off the chill.

'Thank you,' she replied between clenched teeth.

'Um…that is…you're very…' his eyes were ricocheting over her body, never resting lest she accuse him of lechery. Which would have been spot on, of course, but still… propriety. 'You're very…'

'Have you been drinking?' Lily asked, her eyes narrowing as she peered into his face, her hands going to her hips. Not good, Sirius thought, checking off numbers 1 and 2 on his "Signs James is Approaching Disaster and Dismemberment" list. Not good. And then Lily gave an investigative sniff, and her face immediately contorted. And that was it – narrowed eyes, hands on hips, repulsed expression… numbers 1, 2, and 3. James was buggered, and he knew it.

'Oh fuck it,' Sirius heard his friend whisper, before squeezing his eyes shut and reaching blindly for Lily's face. But Lily, who wasn't the cleverest witch at Hogwarts for nothing, knew exactly what was coming. And so, instead of standing there like a ninny, she let out a resounding yell and judo chopped James in the solar plexus. 'Ooughgh!' James cried.

'I'm warning you Potter!' she shouted as he stumbled backward. 'I am armed and dangerous!' She had taken up some sort of fighting stance that looked quite effective, and was glowering at James from between her fists.

'Lily?' James said confusedly.

Grace, who had been examining her fingernails, gave a little huff of annoyance. 'She's taking karate lessons, James,' the blond explained coolly. 'But really – she's only got to the second level or something, so you don't have to worry too much –'

Lily dropped her stance and turned to her friend, her fists going to her hips. 'Why'd you have to go and tell him that?' she asked angrily.

'Sorry,' Grace shrugged, 'it slipped –'

James, who was nothing if not crafty, took advantage of Lily's distraction and dive-tackled her, doing an impressive imitation of a rugby fullback. 'Aggh!' Lily shouted as she and James rolled to the floor in a blur of tangled limbs.

'That must've hurt,' Peter mumbled. He was ranged out with Sirius, Remus, Rob and Allister against the wall – by far the safest place to be, considering Lily seemed to have taken wrestling lessons at some point as well.

'Take that!' she shouted with fervour,

'Uuuugh,' Remus and Sirius groaned, squeezing their eyes shut in vicarious pain.

'HA!' Rob shouted gleefully.

'Oooooahuuughghgh,' James moaned from somewhere beneath Lily, who was currently straddling his back and bending his arms and legs at physically incorrect angles.

'And that's one! Two! And three!' Rob shouted, pounding on a table as though counting down a pin at a real match. 'And the winner is…LILY!'

To her credit, Lily refrained from flexing her muscles and growling menacingly, but she did give James a none-too-covert kick in the ribs as she climbed off of him. Once she was fully vertical she dusted off her jumper, tossed her hair, and looked disdainfully over her shoulder, once more the regal, elegant Head Girl. 'Hands off Potter,' she said coolly, and stepped away.

But James wasn't beaten – no, not yet. With a heaving groan and belly crawl worthy of a shoddy war film, he dragged himself across the carpet and grabbed her by the ankle, jerking her back down. She landed with a screech, her hands forming into claws as she began shouting obscenities and battering every bit of her nemesis she could reach.

'This is really a bit much,' Peter mumbled.

'It's the cockroaches,' Remus explained. 'Foul little things, but they're chock-a-bock full of adrenaline. That's why they're so bloody resilient. Combine them with chocolate, and, well…'

Sirius checked his watch. 'They get another thirty seconds and I'm conjuring a hosepipe.'

'HA!' Lily shouted at that moment, and with a resounding clang, jerked the fire poker from its stand before the hearth, brandishing it before James's nose like a Toledo rapier.

James knew he was beaten but good this time. There was no arguing with a fire poker – especially one being waved around by a combat-trained redhead. 'I surrender,' he said glumly, dragging himself to his feet and lifting his hands in capitulation.

Lily stared at him blankly. 'You…do?'

The poker wavered a bit on "do" and James winced as it drew perilously close to his left nostril. Two blows to the nose in one day would be nothing short of humiliating. 'Yeah,' he sighed. 'I do.'

'Well then…why'd you put up such a fight?' she asked.

James shrugged and scuffed his foot on the carpet. 'I lost, and if I lost I had to snog you –'

'If you lost you had to snog me?' she repeated, and everyone except James took a hasty step back: the last time Lily had used that tone, a third year had wee'd himself.

'Well, yeah,' James was going on, seemingly unaware that he was perilously close to death. 'I thought I could do it, but…' Sirius knew James mean the cockroach clusters – unfortunately, Lily didn't take it quite that way.

'Well you'd better be glad you lost Potter!' she all but shouted. 'You'd better be glad you "couldn't do it"! Because if you had snogged me, you'd be dead! I'd rather snog a Dementor than you, Potter. Bloody hell, I'd rather snog Rob -'

'Brilliant,' Rob said, stepping forward.

Lily swung the poker round to ward Rob off, and he leapt back. 'That was NOT an invitation! You're almost as disgusting as he is –'

While Lily ranted at Rob, who was edging farther and farther away, James was edging closer and closer to her partially-turned back. Just as Lily began to say some very explicit things about Rob, warthogs, and romantic rendezvous, James grabbed her by the shoulders, spun her round, and planted his lips on hers.

For a moment the world froze as everyone tried not to think about cockroach cluster breath. And then – James having some wee hint of the gentleman in him – he released her. The entire common room held its breath as Lily stared blankly at him, and James flashed his infamous cheeky grin. 'Gotcha,' he said.

Lily blinked. And then she punched him as hard as she could on the mouth.

James tumbled backward, the grin still in place, and Lily whirled, too angry for words, to stomp out of the portrait hole. The air was filled with cheers and whistles as everyone applauded this latest bit of entertainment. The portrait slammed shut behind Lily and Grace, and James still hadn't moved.

'Looks like we'll have to carry him up,' Remus sighed, stepping away from the wall. 'What's with this place and girls having fits today?'

'Dunno,' Sirius shrugged, already crossing the floor towards his friend. 'Must be something in the water.'


	10. A Pervy Mind is a Terrible Thing to Wast

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

match: often referred to as a "game" in North American football (soccer, if you will), a match is the structured, timed competition between sides. Without matches, football would be a pastime for the park rather than the sport of champions...

Chapter 10: A Dirty Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

'Didn't mean for you to get into such a scuffle,' Rob was saying ten minutes later as he watched James press a cold cloth to his lip in the seventh year dormitory. 'Didn't mean for her to punch you, either…'

'Thanks,' James said sarcastically. Only it came out a bit more like "sthanks" because his lip – which had split nicely thanks to Lily's punch – was swelling massively.

'Girls are rubbish,' Peter said bracingly, patting James on the shoulder as he took a seat on the nearest four-poster, which happened to be Sirius's.

'Too right,' James mumbled, looking more morose than angry now.

'Yeah,' Rob agreed, getting into the spirit of it. 'Honestly – you ask one if she'd be interested in a quick shag and she bites you. How's that for manners?' Everyone paused for a moment to stare at Rob, perplexed and not a little disturbed. 'Or, er, maybe that's just me…'

'I think what Rob is trying to say,' Remus broke in, ever the voice of reason, 'is that they're not worth worrying over. Especially if they're going to get all violent over something silly.' James just sighed, so Remus tried again. 'Probably she's just angry that you got the best of her.' Sirius had to wonder at the young werewolf's slight exaggeration (in all honesty, Lily had won the battle, even if she'd lost the war), but then, they were attempting to make James feel better, so…

'S'not like we need them anyway,' Allister put in, his Scottish burr thick, his face serious and honest. 'Girls, I mean.'

'Oh, we need them mate,' Rob said fervently. 'We need them.'

Allister's brow wrinkled. 'All you ever do is complain about how they stuff things up.'

Surprisingly, it was Remus who flashed a sly, crooked smile. 'But there are certain benefits.' The innuendo wasn't lost on anyone, and chuckles filled the room.

'But do they outweigh the detriments?' Sirius heard himself ask, and was suddenly the recipient of five confused stares. 'Er…' he stalled, trying to remember his conversation with Ze. But, predictably, all he could think of was what she'd said about sex. 'Um…'

'Are you saying you don't miss certain…things…about Grace?' Rob asked sceptically, his lips quirking.

'No! I mean – of course I miss…that. I'm just saying that it differs from…scenario to scenario. Like, there are times when that's all you want and times when, you know, other things are more important.'

A small silence passed. 'I'm confused,' Peter admitted freely, and everyone else sighed with relief: better not have been the one to say it.

'Alright look,' Sirius said, trying to sort out what Ze had said and discover how it applied here; he knew there was a link – he just couldn't find it. 'Give us a second?' he asked the others, and they shrugged, curious: Sirius rarely had trouble saying what he meant. How did she put it? he was asking himself. It made sense when SHE said it… Or maybe it hadn't – maybe he'd thought he understood, but really, he'd been confused all along. Because now all he could think of was Dorcas, doing homework…about shagging…

Wait – Dorcas. Shagging. Brilliant! 'Got it!' The others were watching him with vaguely amused expressions, but he ignored their scepticism in favour of making his point. 'See, we're at an age where sex is what we think about. You know – hormones and all that rubbish. We're wired for it, like. So it's not our fault that all we see when we look at girls are, well, tits and shagging. But at the same time, there are still things that weigh in to stop us from making mistakes. Like personality – if she's horrible, you're not going to want to shag her because you can't stand being round her. I mean, you could never, you know, with a girl you didn't fancy, yeah?'

In response he received five blank glances, and finally Rob said, 'Speak for yourself, mate.'

'He's got a point. Rob, I mean,' Allister said hastily when the others glanced at him, surprised. 'As long as she kept her mouth shut…'

'See, that's what you're supposed to say,' Sirius said triumphantly. 'You're supposed to act like they're just girl bits. But if it came down to it, you probably wouldn't be able to go through with it – not if you thought she was really horrible.'

'Even if she were good-looking?' Remus asked, one sandy brow fish-hooked toward his hairline.

Sirius, who had been using Dorcas as a sort of model, paused, trying to imagine Dorcas without the bow. 'Even if she were good-looking,' he affirmed a moment later, determined to stick by his point.

Remus looked thoughtful, and for a moment Sirius was sure he had a convert. And then Remus said, 'I'd still be able to. It's a natural urge,' he added when Sirius groaned. 'Look, its not that I'd want to forever or anything, no matter how good it was, but once or twice – yeah, I'd do it.'

'I fink Sirius mifght have a pointh,' James said thickly, wincing as his lip twinged.

'Thank you,' Sirius nodded, sparing James the need to talk more.

'He's just saying that because he's never looked at anyone but Lily Evans,' Rob dismissed, waving off James's comment. 'What's got into you, anyway?' he continued, eyeing Sirius beadily. 'You been reading those books again?'

'If by "books" you mean something other than Witches Gone Wilde, then yeah, I have,' Sirius shot back, determined not to let Rob laugh this off.

'What's this about Witches Gone Wilde?' a voice asked from the door, and they all turned to see Clive, looking decidedly more dishevelled than he had when he'd left that morning, standing just inside the dormitory.

'Oi, tell him he's a nutter,' Rob demanded, pointing to Sirius.

'If Rob says you're a nutter…' Clive grinned, and Sirius threw up his hands.

'I'm not a nutter – I'm trying to make a point and they're refusing to list-'

'I think its because ickle Sirikins didn't get enough love from his mummy – stymied his growth,' Rob chortled, pleased with his psychoanalysis. Sirius refrained from telling him it was a lucky guess.

'What's he on about?' Clive asked, nodding toward Rob as he came farther into the room to drop his coat and things onto his bed.

'Shagging,' Rob promptly replied.

Remus, rolling his eyes, proceeded to explain. 'It all started because Lily hit James again.'

'Ooooh,' Clive said.

'He was a bit stroppy, so we tried to laugh him out of it – the old "girls are rubbish" bit. Only there are a few things we need girls for, because it's no fun doing all the work yourself, as it were. But Sirius was just trying to explain that our, er, desire for companionship is based as much on emotional compatibility as it is hormonal urges – or something. Personality had loads to do with his theory,' Remus added, and Clive sniggered. 'So you can see why we were arguing.'

'You're deliberately misrepresenting what I said – ' Sirius began, but was interrupted, yet again.

'I'll agree it differs from situation to situation,' Remus shrugged. 'But personally, I don't believe that I need to fancy a girl to have a satisfying sexual experience.'

'Yeah, and how many "satisfying sexual experiences" have you had that involve another person, eh?' Sirius asked, folding his arms and leaning back. 'And the bloke in the next shower over doesn't count.'

'Hello Pot,' Remus shot back, 'this is Kettle – you're black!' The laughter, previously aimed at Remus, now shifted back to Sirius.

'Leave off him,' Clive said good-naturedly. 'We're all pots and kettles in that case.'

'Too rigfthht,' James mumbled.

'But if a girl were involved, you'd have to feel at least something for her, yeah?' Sirius pressed, determined that this wouldn't turn into a testosterone-soaked, virility-asserting grunt-fest.

'She'd definitely be feeling "something" from me,' Rob chortled, causing Sirius to groan with frustration even as Allister sniggered along.

Clive, also giving a short laugh, eventually deigned to answer Sirius's question with his usual sanguine ease. 'Yeah, I guess,' he shrugged. 'Because let's be honest – you're not going to be copping it off unless you've convinced her you care. That's just how it works – doesn't mean you've got to be in love with her or anything, but you're never going to have a chance with a girl if you don't show her you fancy her. They expect to be chatted up the way we expect to be snogged - you know, for us its about sensation and for them its about communication.'

'Second,' Rob said immediately, nodding his head. 'Spot on. We just want to have a bit of fun, and they want it to mean something.'

'That's not precisely what he said –' Remus began.

Clive, who obviously wanted the conversation to be over, shrugged. 'S'close enough.'

Sirius was now nearly glaring. 'Would you say that to Ze?'

Clive looked blank. 'Why would Zazzer care?'

Sirius snapped his mouth shut to keep from saying something downright insulting, but he couldn't help thinking because she's your friend and you ought to listen to her. 'Maturity probably has a bit to do with it,' Remus was saying pensively. 'You know – as you get older, the impulse is to be a bit more, er, constant in your affections.'

'Unless you're Rob,' Clive chuckled. 'He's "constant in his affections" now,' he added, tossing with his hand.

This drew a round of laughter – even from Sirius – and successfully defused what had become a rather tense situation. Things might have calmed down had Zeke not chosen that moment to throw open the door and stagger inside, looking positively haggard. 'Oi, what's the matter with you?' Rob asked immediately, looking uncharacteristically serious as he stood and moved toward his friend.

'Kates,' Zeke said dazedly. 'Says it's over.'

'Eh?' Sirius murmured questioningly to Allister.

'His girlfriend,' the younger boy replied, sotto voce.

'Oh,' Sirius murmured, feeling a pang of deepest sympathy.

'What happendth?' James was asking confusedly.

'His girlfriend,' Rob explained to the room at large.

'Yeah, we got that,' Remus shot back impatiently.

Zeke was sinking onto a trunk, his eyes focussed on nothing. 'Said things weren't working out – that I was "never around". And then she just walked off, holding hands with this other guy…'

A collective wince and 'Oooohh,' filled the room.

'She hasn't been- been cheating, has she?' Zeke asked suddenly, glancing up, looking lost and, well, furious.

'Dunno.' 'Couldn't say,' they all hurried to assure him.

'Definitely not,' Rob said with conviction. 'When would she have the time? You were mad about her, you were. Spent every waking second with her.'

'Wasn't enough, seems,' Zeke mumbled glumly.

Everyone glanced around askance: what should they do? Zeke, though quiet and somewhat stoic, wasn't prone to black moods or bouts of depression. While he'd never been one to natter on, he'd always been a constant, quietly amused presence. To see him sitting dejectedly on the trunk, his head hung down between his shoulders, was a truly sad sight. 'How long had they been dating?' Remus asked Rob quietly.

Rob, for once sombre, shook his head slightly. 'Since second term of fourth year – I wondered when he said she was having a hens day in Hogsmeade, but I never thought…'

'D'you think she was with him? Zeke asked miserably, looking up, obviously having heard what Rob had said. 'When she told me she was going with her friends – d'you think she went and met him?'

They all knew the answer: of course she had. But they couldn't say that. 'Hard to say, mate,' Rob said bracingly, clapping Zeke on the shoulder.

'I doubt it,' Remus put in. 'She knew you'd be there, didn't she?'

'Yeah,' Peter agreed, as though he knew from experience, 'hard to have a bit on the side when your boyfriend could spot you any second.'

Zeke nodded morosely. Clive, who had been looking decidedly chipper up until Zeke's arrival, cast about for something appropriate to say. 'She's a right stupid cow if she thinks she's better off with someone else,' he finally offered.

'Yeah,' Rob agreed. 'Girls are rubbish.'

'Not this again,' Sirius mumbled, and Remus, who heard him, suppressed a smile.

'She's probably snogging him right now,' Zeke said morosely.

'You're better off without her,' Peter replied, and James quickly elbowed him in the side.

'How am I better off?' Zeke asked darkly. 'She's snogging some smug Hufflepuff, and I'm sitting in here with my mates. Who's better off then?'

'Hufflepuff's aren't very good kissers?' Peter suggested tentatively.

'Bad snogging's better than no snogging,' Rob said with a resigned shrug.

'Well you'd certainly know about the former,' Remus muttered.

'Oi!' Rob began, but Sirius – all too familiar with how absolutely crap it was to be chucked – interrupted.

'Now's not the time,' he said warningly.

'I was just lamenting the fact that my friend won't be snogging anyone,' Rob said indignantly. 'And not just snogging, either – he's lost his feminine company, and you know what that means. It's hard on a fellow – going without.

'Oh shut up – you "go without" all the time,' Clive laughed.

'Not all the time,' Rob replied indignantly.

'Snogging Dorcas doesn't count. You're living proof that man can survive without woman – well, at school at least,' Clive amended.

'He doesn't really "go without" though, does he?' Peter suddenly piped up. 'I mean, none of us do.'

'What're you saying?'

'What he's saying, Rob, is that we all have rather close personal relationships with ourselves,' Remus explained patiently, and everyone sniggered – even Zeke.

Rob didn't so much as blush; instead, he smiled and shrugged cheekily. 'So I take matters into my own hands now and then – nofink wrong with that.'

'Try telling your hands that,' Clive shot back, and everyone laughed.

'I could give it up if I had to,' Rob claimed when he had recovered. 'Wouldn't be pretty, but I could.'

'Yeah right,' Zeke snorted, his laugh low and booming, a welcome relief from his prior scowl. 'You wouldn't last a week.'

'I'd last longer than you would,' Rob shot back testily.

'Care to lay money on it?' Clive chortled.

'Yeah,' Rob replied defiantly. 'I'd say ten galleons I'll last longer than you and Ezekiel here. Sod it – that I can outlast all of you,' he gestured to include the others as well.

'Oh please,' Clive began, but Remus piped up, interrupting him.

'Maybe we ought to try it – see what it can prove,' he said, a mischievous gleam lighting his eyes.

'Eh?' Zeke asked, confused as he hadn't been party to the earlier conversation.

'I know what it'll prove –' Rob began, but Zeke waved him down.

'Belt it, would you?' he said to Rob. 'I want to hear what I'm missing.'

'Well,' Remus said slyly, shooting a glance at Sirius, 'it's one way to settle the question we were debating so intellectually just moments ago: is Rob right about being willing to shag anything with the appropriate bits, or has Sirius got the truth of it when he says "personality" weighs in?'

'And how's…abstaining,' Clive said, for lack of a better word, 'going to prove that?'

Sirius, who had immediately understood what his friend was saying, chuckled darkly. 'Simply put mate, how desperate will you get before the Fat Lady – or McGonagall – looks enticing?'

'That's bollocks,' Allister said. 'He'd never go for one of them – he'd just –'

'Go wank, yes we know,' Remus finished when Allister, blushing, abruptly stopped. 'That's why we'll lay down a few rules. For starters, no self gratification – of any sort.'

'Huh?' Rob asked thickly.

'No polishing your wand,' Zeke, who had immediately cottoned on, explained patiently.

'No shaking hands with the Minister,' Clive added.

'No caring for your Magical Creature,' was Sirius's contribution.

'Ooh, good one.'

'Right,' Rob said, 'got it. Now, why aren't we doing that again?'

'Because we're trying to discover the outer limits of lust,' Remus deadpanned.

'Yeah,' Sirius grinned, 'you can think of it as research.'

'Research?' Rob repeated.

Zeke rolled his eyes. 'You suggested it, you tosspot – the bet, remember? To see who can go longest without getting his end away?'

'Oh yeahhhh,' Rob grinned. 'Right, well, I'm in.'

'That can't be the only rule though,' Sirius said before Rob could go off on a tangent. 'If we're going to do it, we've got to do it properly.'

'Exactly,' Remus agreed. 'Complete and absolute celibacy.'

'What's that mean?' Peter asked, his brow furrowed deeply.

'Nothing. It means you get nothing,' Clive chuckled.

Peter was still looking blank, so Sirius sighed. 'It means no sexual activity of any sort Pete – no snogging, no touching, no wanking – nothing. And definitely not, you know… intercourse.'

'Hahahaha,' Rob sniggered. 'Intercourse.'

'Ah, maturity,' Remus murmured dryly.

'Thyou seriousth?' James lisped disbelievingly.

'Yes I'm serious,' Sirius replied, then immediately ducked when the others started chucking things. 'Not a joke!' he shouted. 'For once it's not a joke!'

'Sorry,' Remus said apologetically, drawing back the pillow he'd been bludgeoning Sirius with. 'It's just…you know.'

'Yeah,' Sirius sighed. 'I know. It could be worse though – they could've called me Gaylord.'

'Too right,' Remus agreed. 'Now, back to business. This is a vow of celibacy – pretty serious stuff. Who's man enough to take it?'

'I'm in.' Everyone turned to stare at Zeke, surprised. When he noticed their stares he simply shrugged. 'I'm not the keenest about girls right now – rather not have to deal with any of it. Maybe this will, you know, get her out of my system faster.'

'Right well, if he's in, I'm in,' Rob said, nodding to show he was serious. 'Bet you nancy fuckers won't –'

'I'm in,' Remus said with a shrug.

'Metth tooth,' James added.

'And me!' Peter cried, not to be left out.

'Allister?' Zeke asked, and the younger boy shrugged, blushing faintly. 'Guess so,' he said, his head down.

'Good man,' Rob grinned, pounding him on the back.

Everyone looked at Sirius, who grinned. 'Well since I'm going to win –'

'Bollocks –'

'Like hell-'

'What about you?' Remus asked Clive, who was grinning widely and shaking his head.

'Not me,' Clive said with a laugh. 'Unlike you poor bastards, I actually have a chance of snogging a girl in the next week – one that wants to snog me,' he added when Rob opened his mouth. 'So thanks, but no thanks – I'm not missing out for some bet.'

'How long's it going to last then?' Rob asked, suddenly looking a bit peaky.

Sirius and Remus exchanged a shrug. 'Until one man is left standing, I suppose,' Sirius finally said. 'You know – whoever can last the longest. Isn't that the point?'

'But how will we know who's still…you know, standing?' Zeke asked.

Rob sniggered. 'Standing – heh heh heh. Shouldn't be too hard to tell.'

Remus rolled his eyes. 'Or we could just use the Auvunctus Charm.'

'The wot?' Peter asked.

'It's what wizard bookies use to take bets,' Sirius explained. 'Someone writes down the agreement – in this case, "I vow to be celibate for as long as possible" or whatnot – and then everyone who agrees to the terms signs his name. If you break the terms – i.e. snog, shag, or wank – your name gets crossed off, and you forfeit whatever you pledged.'

'Speaking of which,' Remus said slowly, 'what are the stakes? You know – what happens when you lose?'

There was a long moment of silence. 'Money?' Zeke suggested.

'On something like this?' Sirius asked. 'Wouldn't be…right, you know?'

'I'm with Sirius,' James managed, his speech still thick and distorted, but he was speaking slowly enough to be understood. 'Money's no good.'

'Whoever loses has to run starkers through the Great Hall at dinner?' Peter suggested.

They all pondered this for a moment: quality embarrassment, good visibility… 'But more than one person's going to lose,' Zeke pointed out. 'And if loads of people are doing it…'

'The teachers'll notice,' Remus agreed. 'So not that.'

Surprisingly, it was Clive who offered the solution. 'Well, you're going to drop out one at the time, yeah?'

'Theoretically…' Sirius trailed.

'Well then, as you, er, give in, you've got to do something – whatever the rest of the, you know, competitors say. Like a dare, but its determined at the time of the loss, not now – and it depends on how many people are still in. Like the first person is at the mercy of everyone, but in the end there'll be one person who gets to decide the final, um, punishment.'

'Fthaths pretthy cleverths,' James said approvingly.

'I'll agree,' Sirius shrugged. The rest nodded their assent. 'Right then Moons – you've got the best handwriting – get to it.'

As the others teased him about his nancy script, Remus dug round and came up with a bit of parchment and his quill. 'Right,' he said loudly to settle them. 'How'm I wording it then?' Everyone began to shout different phrases, some serious, some outright dirty. Soon there was such a melee that no one was even listening to anyone else.

'I like "no caring for your Magical Crea –'

'Oh come off it – '

'Say "kiss" instead of "snog"–'

'We can't say "pull my plonker" – its like a legal document, it is!'

'And what's wrong with "pull my plonker"? It's a perfectly acceptable turn of phrase – everyone knows it –'

'OI!' shouted Sirius, and everyone froze. 'We're not saying "I will not pull my plonker",' he said sternly to Rob, who pouted. 'Let's just say… I solemnly swear that I will abide in all good faith by the terms stated hereafter –'

'Oooh, that sounds nice,' Peter nodded.

'Official too,' Zeke agreed.

'For the duration of this wager I will not engage in any sort of sexual activity with either myself, or another person. I will not touch, kiss, shag –'

'Can we say "wank"?' Remus asked.

'S'not like anyone else is going to read it,' Clive, who was watching with amusement, replied.

'Oi, how is "wank" better than "pull my –'

'I will not touch, kiss, shag or masturbate,' Sirius said flatly, blushing a bit at the last, but determined to be mature, 'or benefit from any other sexual contact. I agree that the wager shall continue until only one of the below-signed individuals still abides by the terms herein. I understand that individuals shall be removed from the wager pool when they violate the terms by physical deed. Further, I accept that each individual, once disqualified, shall agree to perform or endure whatever task the remaining, er, competitors set forth….' Sirius thought for a moment. 'I think that's it. Moony, read it back will you?'

Remus dutifully read back the agreement, swallowing slightly at the end of the first clause. 'I think that about covers it. Anyone else have something to add?'

'Er, maybe we should have something about keeping it a secret?' Allister suggested tentatively. 'You know, not the best thing to have getting round…'

'Yeah,' everyone agreed, nodding rapidly.

'How about "On pain of swimming naked in the Black Lake I shall not reveal the secret"?'

'Or "My life is forfeit if I let slip"!'

'No – too dramatic –'

'Help,' Remus said to Sirius, and Sirius sighed.

'"Having subjected myself to the constraints of this wager I shall not reveal the wager's existence to anyone not immediately connected with the situation, and understand that such revelation, if made, will automatically disqualify me from finishing out." How's that?' Sirius asked.

Peter looked puzzled, Allister was slowly moving his lips, repeating the words, and Rob was scratching his head. 'Perfect,' Remus said happily, scribbling the last of it out. 'Anything else? Anyone?'

'I still don't see why we can't say "pull my plonker",' Rob said sulkily.

'Oh shut your gob,' Zeke replied.

'Soundth goodth to meth,' James shrugged.

'Right,' Remus said, nodding to Sirius. 'Want to finish it off then?'

Suddenly aware that he was the author of this frankly ridiculous agreement, Sirius said, 'Uhhhh…' Oh come on – it's just a bit of fun, his mind teased, and before he could stop his mouth from opening, he'd said, 'Right. Finish it off with "We the undersigned knowingly and faithfully affix our seals, being aware in whole and part of the stakes of this wager. By recording our names we do enter into a binding magical agreement that shall be superseded only by the wish to protect our lives and health, and shall continue until all stakes and terms have been properly fulfilled. Finis.'

'Brilliant,' Remus mumbled, scribbling the last bit out before glancing up at Sirius. 'You really do have an ear for this sort of stuff – how'd you come up with it all?'

Sirius shrugged. 'It's my dream to be a solicitor. Now – everyone ready to sign?'

'Ink's almost dry… there,' Remus passed the parchment and quill to Zeke.

With a heavy sigh Zeke signed his name, dated, and then passed things on to Rob. 'Must be mental,' Rob mumbled as he scribbled out a hasty signature and inscribed the date.

Allister's signature came in slow, cramped lettering, Peter signed with his tongue between his teeth and James scribbled with his usual flair before passing it back to Remus, who scripted out his name in an elegant hand. 'Your turn,' he grinned to Sirius. 'Msr Personality.'

'Shut it,' Sirius growled back, taking the quill in his hand and looking down at the parchment, which did, surprisingly, look rather official and binding. There's no going back, he thought to himself, and then rolled his eyes at how melodramatic that sounded. With a bold hand he scrawled his name on the last line, affixing the date with a slight spatter of ink. 'There,' he said. 'Done.'

Clive leant back on his bed and laughed. 'You lot are buggered.'

'I rather think the point is that we're not,' Remus shot back coolly.

Clive just folded his arms and looked unbearably smug. 'I give it a week.'

'Oh piss off,' Rob said darkly. 'A week is nothing.'

Clive shook his head. 'Maybe before – but like they say… you never miss it until it's gone.'

*.*.*.*.*

Ze finally climbed out of the shower when her fingertips were disgustingly shrivelled and the water had begun to run cold. For the first fifteen minutes she'd stood beneath the spray she had berated herself for whining like a kid. For the second fifteen minutes she'd mulled over the conversation she'd had with Sirius, which made her feel slightly better about the whingeing (at least she'd managed to speak maturely and coherently to someone). The third fifteen minutes had been spent composing a speech (of sorts) to give at supper, which seemed like the best place as everyone would all be together. It wasn't a brilliant bit of oration, but then, she wasn't the sort that orated brilliantly, and she'd probably just confuse them if she tried. After all, adolescent males weren't the most attentive when food was put in front of them. And considering how awkward this was going to be, one of the major weapons in her proverbial arsenal was that they'd all be relatively calmed by the presence of roast chicken.

She'd revised most of the more scientific ponderings, paring the conversation she'd had with Sirius down to the main points: namely, that she was a girl, deserved to be treated like one, and would appreciate if they'd all do their best to adjust their perceptions and stop viewing females with such double-standard vision.

And all she had to do was get that across to seven teenaged boys. Simple. Right.

Maybe she wouldn't go to dinner – maybe she'd just – 'You're going to dinner,' she said aloud to herself, throwing open the door to the dormitory and stalking in. 'You are going to dinner.'

'No I'm not!' Dorcas wailed from her four-poster. 'And you can't make me!'

While Ze stood frozen, clutching her towel to her chest, staring in horror, Dorcas burst into fresh sobs, the bow wobbling and bobbing about. 'Oh piss,' Ze mumbled. Where was Lily when you needed her? Or better, Serena – out of the seventh year girls, she cried the most, which made her an expert to Ze's mind. Why did it have to be her who got stuck with a sobbing Dorcas. Wait –who said she was stuck? Couldn't she just…leave? She snuck a glance at Dorcas. Big, fat tears were rolling down the other girl's face, and her hands were knotted in her lap. Ze closed her eyes: why did she have to be a compassionate person? Why?

'Er, is something the matter Dorcas?' Ze ventured, hoping this was the right thing to say. Oh, brilliant – really observant, her inner cynic sneered in reply, because she normally cries when she's happy.

'Y-y-yes!' Dorcas sobbed. 'And it's all his fault!'

Ze did some rapid deductive thinking and decided that this would either be James or Rob, depending on how much Dorcas knew. 'That would be…Rob?' she hazarded, deciding that this was safest.

'Yes,' Dorcas sniffled, wiping at her eyes, her face rising until she was positively glowering at Ze. 'And since you're such good friends with him, you can go off and have a laugh somewhere else. Sod off!' Ze, still reeling form the abrupt about-face, watched as Dorcas snapped her bed curtains shut and went about her crying in peace.

Don't say she never did you any favours, Ze told herself as she hurried across the room to her wardrobe, jerking on the clothes she had laid out and shoving her feet into her shoes. The moment she was together she beat a hasty retreat to the common room and was just making her way towards the boys' staircase when the door at the top flew open and Clive came bounding down the steps.

'Have a nice time?' he immediately asked, smiling as he halted in front of her.

So he hadn't heard…that was actually something of a relief. 'Clearly you did,' she grinned back, taking in his bright eyes and dishevelled hair. 'Take a long windy walk on the way home?' she added teasingly, and was rewarded with a broad grin.

'Gentlemen never tell,' was all he said in reply, and Ze laughed.

Before she could say anything though, the others came thundering down the stairs – surprisingly even Zeke and Allister were part of the mob. And they were all looking a bit… something. 'Okay,' Ze said, leaning into Clive. 'What am I missing?'

'Kate broke it off with Zeke,' Clive replied out of the corner of his mouth. 'Another bloke – some Hufflepuff.'

Ze winced. 'And James's lip is from Lily?' she added when she spotted James's puffed-up pucker.

'Right in one,' Clive agreed, somewhat louder on this one. 'We're bound to have the whole story over dinner.'

Ze breathed a sigh of relief: maybe she could distract them after she said her bit by asking James to tell his story? Of course, saying her bit would depend on getting them all to listen to her, and somehow she was thinking that it might not be the best night for that. For a start, they appeared to have forgotten all about her earlier explosion – not a single nervous glance or hesitant comment was thrown her way, just vague greetings. 'Hey Zazzer,' Rob said as he passed her on the way to the door, his eyes glittering. Remus smiled as he followed, and James grimaced – the closest he could manage to the same. She stared beadily after them, wondering what had happened to make them all so… on edge. Even Zeke. Though the normal smile wasn't glimmering in his eyes, he didn't seem overly upset that his girlfriend of nearly two years had chucked him for another guy.

Sirius came to a stop on her other side, breaking her out of her reverie as he arched a brow at her pruney skin. 'Have trouble getting the soap off?' he asked sardonically.

'Have trouble breaking the fight up?' she shot back, nodding toward James.

He didn't bother returning a jibe; he just smiled down at her, slung an arm round her shoulders and said, 'glad to have you back.'

It was Clive's turn to watch with non-verbal question as he herded them out of the portrait hole. In the hall there was a low-level hum of tension, almost like the buzz before an important match. Ze, used to the effect competition had on teenaged males (it had the same effect on teenaged females, after all, it just manifested itself in different ways), felt her teeth go on edge as she listened to the barely-joking banter shooting back and forth between them, comments flying like hexes. Even Allister Wood made a few tentative attempts at needling the others, and was successful simply because the taunts were so unexpected.

After the fourth poorly-veiled attack on Remus's reproductive ability, Ze gave up and asked, 'what's got into you all?'

'Nothing,' they chorused back, their eyes gleaming in the torchlight.

Ze eyed them shrewdly, noticing that only Sirius seemed to be holding back from the verbal fray, and that only Clive seemed amused by it. In fact, Clive was the only relaxed body in the whole group – even Sirius was wound tighter than a bedspring, for all that he was unusually quiet. Whatever had happened while she was in the shower, it had wiped her outburst from their minds and replaced it with something much more engrossing. Definitely not the time to explain herself. She slid another glance round to Clive's positively smug smile. She'd get to the bottom of this…after dinner, of course.

*.*.*.*.*

Clive was never entirely sure how he found himself alone in the common room with Ze that night. He had the vague idea that she had engineered it somehow, but at the time that seemed so unlike Zazzer that he shook the feeling off and instead focused on her easy smile, happily relating the details of his date with Claudia. '…she seemed pretty keen on me,' he said, feeling his face stretch with the smile he couldn't seem to wipe away. 'I mean, not just that she snogged me, she really listened to what I was saying, like it was important to her.'

'Sounds dreamy,' Ze sniggered, but her eyes were kind.

'Well…I listened to her too, you know. She wants to be an Apothecary – its fascinating, really, everything they have to know…' he trailed on for a few more minutes and finally wrapped it up with how keen she had been to accept his offer of meeting her for breakfast the next morning.

'Listen to you – another week and you'll be naming the kiddies. Tell me, have you got drapes and carpets picked out yet, or are you waiting for the wedding?'

'Bugger off,' Clive said, but he laughed along with her. 'Its not like that – she's nice and all, but…we'll see.'

'Did they have a go at you when you back?' she asked innocently.

'Nah,' Clive said, his mouth carrying on while his mind remained occupied with his date. 'They were too busy arguing about girls – Sirius was trying to convince Rob that personality has something to do with sex. Wasn't going over too well.'

'I'd imagine not,' Ze murmured, modulating her voice to encourage him to continue.

'Course, then Zeke came in – Kate'd just chucked him, and in front of her new fellow too – wasn't pretty.'

'He seemed cheerful enough at dinner,' Ze pointed out unobtrusively.

'Well, yeah, but that's 'cos of the bet,' Clive shrugged. 'Taking his mind off of things – well, for now, anyway,' he added with a snigger. 'It's brilliant, really – they're all in it, taken a – a vow of celibacy like bloody monks or summat –' he stopped abruptly, his eyes going wide and then cutting to Ze. 'Er…'

'Oh do go on,' she said with a grin. 'You were just getting to the good part.'

Clive closed his eyes and groaned. 'How do I always manage to do this?' he asked the ceiling as Ze settled back into the couch and watched him, chuckling. Suddenly he sat up, mouth slightly open, to stare at her with a strange mix of disbelief and accusation. 'You did this on purpose!'

'Yeah, well, you fell for it,' she shrugged, still grinning wickedly.

'I wasn't supposed to tell. Actually, they're not supposed to tell,' he said after a moment, looking marginally less appalled. 'I never promised not to…'

'Well its not like I'm going to go telling anyone,' Ze assured him, 'so you might as well just finish it.'

He shot her a slightly disapproving glower, and then shrugged. 'S'not like you wouldn't have found out eventually.'

'Exactly.'

Clive heaved a sigh. 'Right, well, it's like this….'

Twenty minutes later Ze knew all she could want to know and, after promising Clive she wouldn't tell anyone not involved that she knew, she waved him off up the stairs, once again wearing the wide loopy grin he'd been sporting since his date with Claudia. He was so pleased about his "blossoming romance" that he'd barely even noticed he was telling her some very private things. Which wasn't really unlike Clive, much to Ze's amusement. Oh, he was an excellent friend and a very decent guy, but he did have a tendency to open his mouth and not mind what was coming out of it. Never having been the sort to have any secrets, this had never bothered Ze. And, since she'd always more or less known all she wanted to know of the rest of the boys' doings, she'd never before used it to her advantage. But tonight it had seemed like the wisest thing to do – perhaps a touch dishonest, but then, he would have slipped up on his own eventually anyway.

And what hilarious news it was: seven boys, all positively stewing in adolescent hormones, deciding to see who could go the longest "without." Clive had been fairly specific in the definition of "without" too, specific enough that Ze had decided there really were things she'd rather not imagine. Honestly, the mental pictures she'd gotten…blech. But, knowing what the outcome would be, it seemed a small price to pay for the forthcoming hilarity. And it would give Lily some small measure of peace from James, which would make living with her a bit easier. So really, all round, it was an excellent situation. For her. Ze briefly wondered about the atmosphere of the boys' dormitory, and didn't bother to stifle her grin.

Life was about to get all sorts of interesting.

A/N - for those who were hoping that "racy" meant ze and sirius snogging rampantly... i'll see what i can organise for future chapters.

so, as always, thanks to all who've read, and all who've reviewed, and all who are about to make use of the little box just below to do so again!


	11. Only Fools Have Good Intentions

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

foul: the incorrect or unfair action of player as called by the referee. a foul must occur during play, against another player, and must violate the Laws of the Game.

Chapter 11: Only Fools Have Good Intentions...

Sunday morning dawned bright and clear, and Ze was in a much more cheerful mood than she had expected to be. The night before she'd lain in bed and listened as Grace recounted the tale of Lily and James's showdown in the common room for a wide-eyed Serena. Provided Grace wasn't exaggerating (and when it came to Lily and James, no embellishment was needed), it seemed that the Head Boy and Head Girl had provided Gryffindor with something far more entertaining to gossip about than the identity crisis of Zenobia Meridian. But, excited as she was that no one would remember her as the nutter shouting about being a girl, this also meant that she was going to have to find another way to introduce the subject. Because she had no intentions of remaining a genderless freak for…oh, the rest of her life.

But while she was puzzling out the process of asserting herself, at least she would have entertainment. That was really what was stretching the gleeful smile across her face as she bounded down the stairs toward breakfast. Just knowing what the boys had done to themselves – and that they would probably feel obliged to persevere out of some deranged sense of male honour - had her feeling positively charitable towards her friends. So they might not know she was a girl – who cared about that when they were willing to debase themselves for her amusement? Chuckling to herself as she saw Clive and Sirius sprawled on the couches, waiting for the others, she couldn't resist wandering over and asking in a very innocent voice, 'Sleep well?'

'Like the dead,' Clive said happily.

Sirius just issued and all-purpose grunt and glowered at the ceiling. Ze, stifling a snigger and a grin, turned back to Clive, eyeing his combed hair and positively clean shirt. 'You're looking smart,' she told him. 'I haven't seen you this done up for breakfast in…ever.'

He blushed faintly, but couldn't stop the smile. 'It's not too much?'

'Nah,' she shook her head. 'You walking down with the rest?'

'Yeah,' he said with a quick nod. 'Don't want to look too eager.'

Ze nodded as though this were a very serious bit of strategy, and worked at hiding her grin. 'Good plan.'

'Oi, we going or not?' Rob asked from the foot of the stairs, and Ze was surprised to see that he looked his usual self.

'Just waiting on you,' Sirius replied, sitting up and shoving a hand through his hair.

Ze eyed him a bit more critically and realised that what she had taken for frustration was actually a genuine strop. He was angry about something, but looking at the faces of the others ranging down the stairs, yawning and stretching, blowed if she knew what it was. And then there was Clive, positively vibrating with nerves, and the rest of them poking and prodding at one another, the gleam of competition still in their eyes. Hm. Going to be an interesting meal, breakfast.

Interesting turned out to be a mild understatement.

The moment they reached the Great Hall Clive's head was whipping round like a dog on the hunt's. Finally Ze took pity and turned him by the shoulders to face the door. 'There, right in front of you,' she said, patting him on the back. 'Go and get her.'

Clive took a deep breath, mumbled something, and went hurrying across the room to meet Claudia, who was too looking rather put together for Sunday breakfast, wearing a stylish little skirt and a bright blue jumper. Ze watched them shyly greet one another (honestly, they'd been snogging like demons the day before, why the coquettish glances?) before turning back to the table.

'I don't see why it's got to be the "hoover",' Zeke was saying to Rob. 'Everyone knows the veletision is what you use to clean.'

'It's television you nutter,' Rob was replying impatiently, 'and it doesn't clean things. It's a box that you watch pictures on.'

'Why would you need a box to watch pictures?' Zeke asked blankly.

'Aghghghg,' Rob groaned.

'Muggle Studies project,' Peter mumbled to Ze, who was watching them confusedly as she buttered her muffin. 'They've been at this since half eight.'

'Blimey,' Ze mumbled back, shoving the muffin into her mouth. 'Glad I'm not a boy.'

'Right so, this is Ze,' Clive was saying brightly, and Ze jumped and turned in her seat to see Claudia, belatedly realising that half her breakfast was hanging out of her mouth, and that the other half was impeding speech.

'Highthfh,' she said, spraying crumbs even as her hand rose to cover her mouth.

'Pleasure,' Claudia said slowly, staring at Ze in a manner normally reserved for slimy critters and the more arcane portions of Slytherin courtship rituals.

'And that's James, and Sirius…' Clive continued, and Ze heaved a sigh, expelling more crumbs as she turned away. Honestly, did the universe plan these things? But Ze's mastication faux pas seemed forgotten as Claudia attempted to smile at the boys. Her expression wasn't quite happy though – more of sickly grimace than a smile. It was clear that she was not enchanted by Peter and Rob, both of whom were putting Ze's messy habits to shame by stuffing as much breakfast as possible into their gaping maws without consideration for complimentary taste or texture.

'Fshave a sleat,' Rob managed, his mouth full to bursting as he spoke, and Claudia visibly recoiled.

Peter swallowed, issued a rather wet burp, and smiled, a bit of tomato wedged firmly between his unfortunately prominent front teeth. 'Lovely to meet you,' he said kindly, and stifled another belch.

Claudia looked horrified, and turned to Sirius and Remus, clearly hoping for more civilised habits. But she was just in time to see Remus lift a large sausage to his mouth, cramming the entire thing in as he nodded in reply to something Zeke was saying. Sirius was slightly more refined, being nonchalantly engaged in picking his teeth with his thumb…and staring at what he recovered with a look of vague interest.

'Mind if we join you?' Clive asked brightly.

'Oooh! Look! There's Maura – back in a flash – ' And Claudia was off, practically sprinting across the Hall towards the door where a rumpled, sleepy girl with loads of curly brown hair was just ambling in.

'Think she's a bit nervous,' Clive said, sitting beside Ze and helping himself to eggs. 'You know – meeting my friends for the first time…'

Ze glanced down the table and tried to see things as Claudia had: Peter, smearing jam across his face with a careless swipe of his hand, James gesturing emphatically with a slice of toast, slinging butter this way and that; Sirius, still in a black mood, broodingly grinding his food into mush with his fork, crumbs and wet little splatters shooting hither and thither; Rob, both hands engaged in shovelling food down manically. Ze glanced down at her own plate, at the blast radius of crumbs and juice splatters. We're pigs she thought idly. No wonder she's fleeing for her bloody life. 'Yeah, probably she's just nervous,' she said to Clive, and reached for another muffin.

Claudia returned a few minutes later, towing her friend – "Maura, you remember Clive…and these are Clive's…friends…" – who was looking half awake and barely a quarter pleased to be there. No one really noticed Maura's arrival however, and since Claudia pushed her firmly onto the bench before taking the seat between the other Ravenclaw girl and Clive, no one tried to make conversation. Clive and Claudia were soon involved in slightly awkward chatter, to which Maura would contribute whenever there was a pause and Claudia elbowed her. Ze watched the whole thing with fascination bordering on awe: this was how you behaved on a date? Well, maybe not a date as it was breakfast, but…still.

And then Remus dropped his fork and mumbled something to James, and James's head jerked up, his expression hard and narrow. 'Lily?' Ze guessed, nudging Peter under the table with her foot, not wanting to turn round and stare.

But Peter was shaking his head, almost whimpering. 'N-no. Wythe.'

Ze abandoned her dignity and whipped round to glare as beadily as James. Sure enough, strutting down the aisle between the tables came Nigel Wythe, sneering for all he was worth. Being the Slytherin quidditch captain (not to mention a professional-grade ass) he was decidedly out of place, promenading along the side of the Gryffindor table, trailed by two of his house-mates, Lucien Bulstrode and Martin Polk. All three boys were looking disdainfully smug as they shoved smaller students out of the way, clearly intending to have some sort of confrontation with their rivals.

'What's he up to?' she hissed across the table, but Sirius and James and Remus were a decent ways down, and buffered from her voice by Peter, Rob, and Zeke. Rob was still shovelling food down, but Peter and Zeke were watching Wythe warily, all too familiar with his preferred method of dealing. Ze could admit with perfect honesty that even if Wythe hadn't been their sworn enemy, she wouldn't have cared for him - there just wasn't anything there to like. Aside from the fact that he was manipulative, under-handed, prone to cheating and a complete chauvinist, he was incredibly unattractive. A hush fell over the Gryffindor section of the Hall as the three Slytherins passed, and all eyes followed their progress.

'Potter,' Wythe smirked when he drew even with the quidditch side, Polk and Bulstrode standing menacingly behind him for effect.

'Wythe,' James replied, going for condescension and achieving an audible grinding of teeth. 'What brings you here – trying to get upwind of your housemates?'

It was a lame attempt at needling, but Wythe responded well, his lip curling and his neck tightening. 'Not exactly,' he sneered. 'Rosier just told me something so ridiculous I had to come ask for myself.'

'Don't bother,' Sirius sighed, 'we already know.'

'You do?' Wythe asked, completely thrown off by this unanticipated response.

'Yes,' Sirius said with a completely straight face. 'I didn't want to be the one to tell you this Nigel, but Bulstrode's been cheating on you for ages – he and Polk just fell in love-'

There was a shout of laughter from the Gryffindors within hearing distance, and Polk let out a yell, trying to leap over the table to get to Sirius, who was looking very smug. 'I'll bloody well kill –' the furious Slytherin spat, but Wythe jerked him back.

'Shut up,' he snarled at his minion, shoving the shorter boy back beside Bulstrode, who looked as though he was still trying to puzzle the situation out. 'The teachers are staring.' Polk quieted, stepping back and glaring balefully at Sirius. Content that things were settled, Wythe turned his sneer on Sirius, his eyes burning. 'Wouldn't be making comments like that if I were you Black – not with you and Potter being so…close.'

His tone had rung with scathing innuendo, but Sirius just shrugged. 'And yet we get more from girls than you do. So sorry for not being insulted,' he added with a vicious smile. 'I know how long it must have taken you to think that up.'

Wythe called Sirius something very rude, but even that couldn't hold the attention of the Hall. It was clear that, as the teachers were watching carefully from the staff table, nothing exciting was going to happen, and so most people went back to their breakfasts, ignoring the tight little knot of raging tempers sitting in their midst. Ze, however, was not so easily distracted. Wythe had leant into the table, shoving Allister out of the way to get right in James and Sirius's faces…and by the look of things, what he was saying wasn't particularly nice.

She caught a few words: 'stuffing knocked out of you….by a girl…fucking poof… can't even fight off…' and decided that Wythe had heard about Lily soundly trouncing James. James, who did have a bit of a prideful streak (alright, an enormous prideful streak), was glaring hotly and saying something back. '…just because I don't hit girls… not all of us were raised in caves…' Wythe snarled, then got even closer and said something that was well below Ze's register. She tried to lean in closer, but Clive chose that moment to tap her shoulder.

'…don't you think so?' he asked, and she turned to see him staring at her desperately, his eyes wide and beseeching.

'Er…yeah,' she replied quickly, deciding it was more important to turn back and see what Wythe was saying than rescue him from an awkward conversation.

She was stopped, however, when Claudia gave her a horrified look. 'How could you even say that?' the Ravenclaw gasped, and Ze stared at Clive accusingly: she had no idea what she'd agreed to.

'Er…well…you know…' she stalled, glaring at her friend, demanding help, and he frantically began to mouth things. The first words looked like "slug warm", but she'd never been good at reading lips so she gave him a confused glance. He stepped on her foot and mouthed "slug warm" again, then added "glassed in trap". 'Er…yes, of course… I agree… that…' she trailed. Clive, still mouthing frantically, kicked her beneath the table. 'Ouch! Yes, I mean, of course I agree that…slugs are…' Clive began to gesture, slicing his hand across his throat in the universal sign for "death". 'That dead slugs – no warm – slugs are warm in traps?' she said, and then shook her head. 'What?' she asked, staring at Clive. 'I think I'm confused. Sorry.' And she turned her back on Claudia, who was staring at her in horror, and Clive, who looked ready to kill her. But she didn't get to see what Wythe and James and Sirius were up to, because Wythe was turning away, looking far too smug for comfort, and Sirius was glaring at James.

'What's going on?' Ze asked Rob, who looked blearily up from his breakfast.

'Eh?'

'Oh, never mind.'

*.*.*.*.*

'Slugs are warm in traps?!'

Ze closed her eyes and massaged her temples, telling herself that she would not get a headache.

'What were you thinking?' Clive cried, throwing himself onto the couch beside her and staring at her in horror. 'How did you even come up with that?'

'What? How did I come up with that? You were the one mouthing things at me – how was I supposed to know?'

'It was Slughorn,' he groaned. 'Slughorn, as in the potions professor. Not slug warm.'

'Oh, well exccuuuuuuse me,' Ze snapped back. 'Sorry I'm not a bloody mind reader.'

'Slughorn,' he repeated, shaking his head. 'I said "Slughorn's class isn't crap" okay? What's so hard about that?'

'You were arguing about Slughorn's class being crap?' Ze stared, unable to comprehend this.

'She's in Ravenclaw – she talks about these things,' he replied patiently.

'Yeah, but why were you saying Slughorn's class isn't crap?' Clive just heaved a sigh, his expression saying "you just don't understand". 'What?' Ze asked. 'You've never liked it, he's always telling us off and you think it's complete kak-'

'Yes, well, it's never a good idea to agree with a girl all the time,' Clive said with another condescending sigh.

'Or what, she might get the idea that you have something in common?'

Clive rolled his eyes slight and shook his head. 'Never mind Zaz.'

'Fine, forget it.' Ze sat back, resisting the urge to let out a frustrated groan. Why was he acting like this? "It's never a good idea to agree with a girl all the time?" Where had that come from. Probably you don't want to know her common sense said. Probably you're right she agreed, and picked up her Transfiguration text again. She wasn't actually revising – it was more or less impossible in the common room – but she didn't want to sit and stare into the fire like a zombie. Around her most of Gryffindor was laughing and talking in small groups of three or four, friends having a laugh before they went off to scrabble together their homework for the following morning. Opposite her James and Remus were having a game of chess, and Sirius was sitting tensely in the chair beside them, his attention on the girls' staircase rather than the chessboard. Ze had made one brief attempt at conversation, but it hadn't gone over well. When she'd asked about Wythe, James had looked guilty and Sirius had mumbled something about people whose mouths moved faster than their minds. James had coloured at this, but didn't defend himself. Ze, deciding that she wouldn't be getting any further information, had delved into her Transfiguration book, waiting for Clive to come back and lament the damage she had wrought on his date. Which had all been his fault, of course…not that he would ever admit to it. She had just settled into a rhythm of turning a page every few minutes and ignoring Clive's low mutterings when she saw Sirius twitch slightly.

She glanced up to see Grace and Serena, both looking very put together, stepping into the common room. Grace was smiling her coy little smile, and Ze could swear she saw the blond girl's eyes dart to Sirius just before she let out a tinkling little laugh. Hm. At the sound of that laugh, Sirius nodded firmly to himself and stood, crossing the floor to intercept the two girls. Ze wasn't the only one paying attention; James and Remus weren't concentrating on their game, and Clive was not-so-subtly watching over the top of his book. Sirius was obviously expecting Grace to stop when she saw him, but instead she ignored him completely, actually stepping around him to get to the portrait hole.

'Grace, could I have a word?' he said, and the entire room went silent as every eye turned toward the action. Sirius was looking nervous but resolute. Grace just looked beautiful and bored. 'I was hoping-'

'Look Sirius, I don't want to talk about this anymore,' she interrupted in carefully calculated, carrying tones. 'I don't want to go out with you again. It's over.'

Sniggers were immediately stifled and gleeful, gaping faces hastily covered. Sirius actually rocked back on his heels as Grace turned, her face smug, toward the exit. But Sirius put his hand out and said, 'I don't want you back Grace – I just want my shirt.'

Grace's shoulders snapped tight as fresh sniggers – not so successfully stifled this time – broke out across the room. But then she was turning back to Sirius, her only visible reaction two spots of colour high in her cheeks. 'What shirt?' she asked, her voice shaking slightly, but she tossed her hair, striving for nonchalance.

'The one I gave you,' he said slowly, looking as though he barely recognised the girl before him. 'You know, it's black, has a little white –'

'Oh that,' she interrupted, her laugh harsh and snide. 'I chucked that ages ago – sorry.'

'You – you threw it out?' he stared, taking a step away from her, clearly horrified.

She shrugged, but Ze could see that her eyes weren't meeting Sirius's. 'It was ancient,' she said breezily. 'And I didn't want it anymore.'

She's lying Ze thought.

'You're lying,' Sirius said, staring into her face. 'You wouldn't have –'

'Look, sorry to have hurt your feelings,' Grace said, her icy control splintering round the edges, 'but it's gone. Just go buy yourself a new one.' And with that she turned on her heel, a slightly scandalised Serena following.

The portrait swung shut and there was dead silence for a moment. Then conversation roared back into swing, Sirius standing, lost and dejected, at its centre.

*.

I hate her. The words floated through Sirius's mind dreamily, and he shook his head, trying to push the horribly lost feeling away so he could think again. He didn't hate Grace – he'd got over that part of it. It was just…how could she? How could she have thrown his shirt away when she knew… he'd told her, too, told her it was really important to him. And he'd given it to her so she'd have something of his, which she'd said she wanted –

And then she'd chucked him, and probably right after she'd done that, she'd chucked his shirt.

Who was he fooling? Grace hadn't sat awake all night, wondering what had happened. She hadn't looked at photos of the two of them and wished it wasn't over. She hadn't hated being round her friends, hadn't hated being alone, hadn't felt so – so empty. She'd probably written that letter, posted it, and immediately gone out somewhere with her cousins, to a party, or a pub, gone out and laughed and joked and not thought at all about it…

'Er…excuse me…'

Sirius looked up, realised that somehow he'd been standing just in front of the portrait hole, and was blocking the way for two third-year boys. 'Sorry,' he said quickly, moving out of the way. His eyes slid toward the fire, where James and Remus were watching him, concern on their faces. When his eyes met James's, his friend started to stand, and Sirius turned away and pushed the portrait open again, dropping into the corridor and letting his feet lead him away.

Girls were rubbish.

*.

Ze chewed the inside of her cheek as she watched Sirius clamber out of the portrait hole and into the corridor beyond. Across from her James and Remus were murmuring in low voices, their eyes serious. Clive sighed heavily and shook his head. 'Poor guy.' Ze glanced at her friend, nodding her agreement. Clive shook his head again and opened his own Transfiguration book. 'Have you started the essay yet?'

'No,' she replied automatically, even though she'd finished it the week before.

'Mgghhgm,' he mumbled.

She wasn't worried about Transfiguration, or essays, or Clive. All three could sort themselves out with minimal effort, and that couldn't be said of everything. At the moment, Ze was more concerned with what Grace had said to Sirius. "I chucked that ages ago", she'd claimed. But she'd been lying. Ze would bet all the money she had to her name that the blond girl had been lying. In fact, she'd bet money that the shirt was up in Grace's wardrobe or her trunk, right this very moment, in their dormitory.

But how long would it stay there?

She'd seen the anger in Grace's face - hard as the other girl had tried to hide it, it had shown through. Grace had wanted to humiliate Sirius – and why? what had he done to deserve it? – and when he'd said he didn't want her either, he just wanted his shirt, she'd been furious. She might not have chucked the shirt in the bin yet, but the moment she had a chance, she would. Spiteful – that was the perfect word for Grace. And Ze could prevent it. It was clear the shirt was important to Sirius – important enough that he'd risked public humiliation to get it back – and all Ze had to do was invade Grace's privacy like a common thief, and steal it. Simple, really.

That's conniving, she told herself. How would you feel if someone went through your things? And then she thought of how horrible Sirius had looked, and she thought this is a brilliant plan, and pushed herself off of the couch.

'Where you going?' Clive asked absently.

'Er…to write my essay – can't think down here,' she said.

'Okay,' he nodded. 'See you later.'

She nodded to James and Remus, who were still talking in quiet voices, their chess game forgotten, and turned to the stairs, fervently hoping Dorcas was out.

Luck was with her. When she pushed open the door to their room it was completely empty of people, just five beds and the clutter of five girls sitting innocently in the quiet. As Ze shut the door behind her she decided to check the loo as well, just in case. But no one was in the shower, and, judging by the absence of rucksacks and books, both Lily and Dorcas must be in the Library. Lily could be counted on to be away the whole afternoon, but Dorcas…well, there was no point in even attempting to predict the behaviour patterns.

Deciding it was better to be safe than sorry (or caught rummaging through someone else's things, as the case might be), Ze cast a quick Alarming Charm on the door, enchanting it to hum loudly whenever someone set foot on the landing. Then, standing in the centre of the room, she stared at Grace's area.

'You can do this,' she told herself sternly. It's dishonest, her conscience said in pious tones. Oh please, her id shot back. If we didn't do things we shouldn't do, we'd never get anything done. Rolling her eyes at her own internal monologue, Ze cracked her knuckles and stared down the massive wardrobe before her, one door open, spilling out fancy shoes and silky tops and skirts. When does she wear all this? Merlin knows she can't sport it to class, and hiking to the village in those heels…blech. 'Oh stop stalling,' she said irritably, 'and get on with it.'

pAnd so she did. She discovered that, despite her reservations, approaching the wardrobe and peering inside was quite possible. As was holding her wand aloft, saying lumos! and shining the narrow beam of light across the clothes hanging brightly inside. Careful not to disturb things – Grace wasn't nearly as neat as Lily, or as freakishly organised as Dorcas, but she would probably notice if Ze pawed through things clumsily – Ze edged the door open a fraction wider and peered inside. Every where she looked were gauzy tops and skinny vests and singlets and sleek, soft jumpers. But no black t-shirts. Grace just wasn't the sort to wear something like that – especially if it were old and tatty. Perhaps her trunk then?

But no sooner had she stepped towards the trunk than an idea surfaced. You're an idiot, Ze told herself What were you thinking, searching about like a common thief? All you needed was a Summoning Charm. In retrospect, she supposed it was a good thing she hadn't automatically thought of that – surely that proved she was an intrinsically honest person, despite the circumstances? – but she had to admit it would have saved her loads of time. She had no idea what the shirt looked like – she'd probably seen Sirius wear it a thousand times, and perhaps even Grace had used it as pyjamas on occasion – but she'd never noticed it. But that really didn't matter in the end – she knew it was black, had a small white something on it, and belonged to Sirius. That ought to be enough to discover it if it were hidden anywhere. Squaring her shoulders, Ze held out her wand, thought firmly of a black shirt belonging to Sirius, swished and flicked with gusto, and said, 'Accio Shirt!'

For a moment she was afraid it had failed – that Grace had been telling the truth, and that the shirt really was mouldering in a rubbish heap somewhere. And then the side of the wardrobe that was still closed gave a slight rattle, and Ze let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding. Looking over her shoulder to check (just in case…) she approached the wardrobe and carefully cracked open the door. Inside were a few drawers and a small shelf over which Grace's jewellery and makeup were scattered. One of the drawers rattled again, and Ze, swallowing nervously, edged it open. She glanced down in and saw that – thankfully – it didn't contain knickers. Rather, it was full of socks, socks and stockings and the odds and ends that aren't really clothing, but aren't really undergarments either. And there, in the very back, wadded up and shoved behind a pair of gloves, was a ball of soft black cloth. It wiggled as though trying to escape, and Ze gingerly eased it out, holding it up and shaking to see a black shirt, too large to be Grace's favoured fit, but too small to be properly sized for Sirius. Grace had been right about one thing though: it was ancient. The hem and sleeves had begun to fray a the edges, the cloth separating in places to leave a tattered edge. It was really more of a charcoal gray than black, and washed so soft and smooth. And it was Muggle clothing.

Ze knew the small white symbol done in paint on the left breast – knew it from years and years of football kits and trainers and jackets, all bearing the same small glyph. Adidas. It was the ultimate Muggle sport brand, definitely not the sort of trendy thing sold in clothing shops, and Ze could honestly admit that it was the best stuff on earth. Adidas had been supplying athletes with what they needed since, oh, the 1940's, and in Ze's world it was more or less all people wore. But none of that explained how Sirius had come to own – and not just own, but apparently treasure – a tatty Muggle sport shirt. Which he had given to Grace. Which Ze had stolen.

And moreover, now that you've got it, what are you going to do with it? her common sense asked. You can hardly just walk up to him and say "heard you were missing this" – he'd think you were mad. And, of course, there's the small matter of this being none of your business. Because that was really the problem, of course – this wasn't her concern. It was between Sirius and Grace, and though Ze had trusted her instincts when they told her Grace was lying, that didn't make it her place to go rummaging through Grace's things to prove the point. A smart woman would ball the shirt back up and wedge it back into the drawer, because, though Grace hardly treated it with great care, or gave it pride of place, she had kept it – that had to mean something.

pBut she won't keep it the cool voice of reason pointed out. She'll throw it out the moment no one can see her do it. You know she will. Again, Ze trusted her instincts. Whatever reasons Grace had had for keeping the shirt had been overrun by Sirius' public admission that he was more interested in reclaiming his clothes than his ex-girlfriend. Grace was not the sort to take things like that in stride – she wasn't the sort to take them at all. And if Ze returned the shirt to the drawer, it would be lost in the bin (or worse, in the fire) long before she could hope to take it again.

And so she folded it carefully into a small bundle and edged the drawer closed on Grace's stockings and then shut the door on her cosmetics and jewellery as well. In a few moments Ze had crossed the room, leaving Grace's things outwardly unchanged. But she was still holding the black shirt, wondering what to do. She couldn't keep it – that would be foolish. Aside from the fact that it didn't belong to her, keeping it would be stupid because there was every chance Grace would discover it missing and go looking for it. She might even use the same method of searching Ze had, and the last thing Ze needed was to have Sirius's t-shirt flying out of her wardrobe in response to a Summoning Charm. That would really make living with Grace a joy.

So the only option left was to return it. 'Yeah,' she muttered to herself, 'because that's going to be so much fun to do.' There was no possible way she could pass the shirt off to Sirius and nonchalantly say "saw this lying around and thought it looked like yours". And she couldn't hide it somewhere and "casually" mention that she thought she'd seen it – Sirius was too clever for that, and probably wouldn't welcome her interference anyway. So the only option was sneaking. It offered anonymity, no pressure to explain, and (most importantly) she could do it this very minute.

Grabbing up her wand, Ze tapped herself on top of the head and looked down to see that her body was only a faint, streaky flicker that blended completely with her surroundings. The shirt clutched in her hand, she smiled. She might not be able to sit down and talk, as Sirius had done for her, but maybe she could help him feel a bit better after all.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Sirius returned to Gryffindor tower while everyone else was at supper. He passed a few younger students in the common room, and ignored their wide-eyed gaping as he took the stairs two at a time to the boys' dormitory. He had spent several hours wandering the castle and grounds, the drizzly, dismal weather matching his mood. Honestly he'd thought he was over this, the feeling empty and miserable, thought he'd got past it before hols were over. Coming back to school had been nice, coming back and being around people constantly – talking and laughing and joking, pulling pranks with James and Remus and Peter, playing quidditch with the team, chatting with Ze… somehow in all of that he'd forgotten about Grace. Or, not forgotten, but gotten over how badly she'd hurt him, accepted it and moved on until her presence elicited a mild sense of discomfort rather than a searing pain. She'd become rather a memory, someone he knew but didn't know, someone whose doings were, once again, not of any interest to him. At first he had wanted to rail at her, to demand an explanation, something better than "we've grown apart", because that had been rubbish. But lately, all he'd cared about was that she had his shirt, and that he wanted it back. Which was foolish, except…that was the shirt. To anyone else it was just a wad of useless cotton, but to him, it was something indefinable, something priceless. And he'd foolishly thought she'd just give it back, easy asked, easy gained. He hadn't been thrilled about having to ask – and in public too, because she assiduously avoided him – but he'd still felt relatively sure that he would walk away from the encounter feeling better about things.

But watching Grace, seeing how- how - cruel she'd been, had just made him feel worse. How had he never seen that in her? That selfish need to always be…better, to always win? Or did you see it and ignore it because you didn't want it to be there? an all-too-reasonable voice asked. Did you overlook it because you wanted to think she was –

'She was not perfect,' he ground out, throwing the door to the seventh years' dormitory open. 'And I knew that.' I knew that all along. It was why I fancied her – because she managed to look so perfect without being so…perfect… And then his thoughts trailed off, because there, lying on his bed as though he'd folded it out of the laundry to put away, only to forget to stow it in his trunk, was his shirt. His favourite shirt.

She'd returned it.

She'd lied about chucking it, and he'd known, and called her on it, and even though she couldn't admit it out loud, she'd given it back. Looking perfect without being perfect…

Maybe she did understand.

A/N - right, well, it was time for more soul searching and a smattering of seemingly-pointless plot twists that will (probably) all work out in the end. that, and Sirius desperately needed to brood a little. i would also like to add, for all those who have expressed concern that the story is wandering, that, well, the story is going to wander a bit. hopefully you've noticed that this is a farce with some rather satirical undertones (or is that overtones? - i can never remember). i enjoy writing it and making it as ridiculous as possible, and while i'd like the characters to be slightly more fleshed-out than traditional archetypes, the original idea behind this story is to gently mock (and shamelessly employ and embellish) some of the more common cliches found in fanfiction.

the entire idea of the sporty girl who decides to make herself over, there being a bet about sex, the neurotic weirdo who's the butt of every joke (that would be Dorcas), even the migrating knickers, are all things common to stories about adolescent drama - mostly because they are appealing (albeit exaggerated) escapes from the average adolescent life. i suppose my point is that, as a whole, this story shouldn't be taken seriously - the characters may delve into realism once in awhile, but the agnst and emotion are mostly meant to be hyperbole. so take heart - it shall be ridiculous to the end...but it is going to be a rather windy walk to get there.

as always, thanks to all who've read and reviewed - you are wonderful! and i would be much obliged if you would do so again...


	12. Putting the Nick Back in Knickers

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 12: Putting the "Nick" Back In Knickers

James Potter was getting a bit worried. And he didn't like to worry – it made his hair go flat. He wasn't sure how, as worry made most people's hair stand on end, but…flat hair was bad. Very bad. And he was fairly sure that if he looked in a mirror right about now, he would see the first tell-tale signs of limp, straggly locks. If it went on, he'd look like Snivellus, and nothing, nothing was going to allow that to happen.

He needed a solution. He needed a plan. He needed Euclid Euston's Electrifying Hair Potion. And he needed it –

'Has anyone seen my left sock?'

Drawn out of his reverie, James looked down to see Peter, half-wedged under his four-poster, only his chubby little legs visible, his feet straining for purchase on the slippery stone floor. Oooh, this could be good. 'Have you asked the right one?'

'Whmmgpgh?' Peter shoved himself backward, no easy feat as his rotund belly had to squeeze out from under the bed. 'What?' he repeated as he popped up, his hair full of dust.

'Have you asked the right one?' James repeated. 'If the left one's gone missing, the right one would be the most logical sock to ask.'

Peter scratched his head. Remus couldn't suppress a sigh. 'Socks aren't logical Pete,' Remus said. 'He's taking the piss.'

But Peter wasn't listening – he was rummaging in his trunk and coming up with a hideously purple sock that had one large hole where the big toe ought to be. 'Oi!' he said to it with as much command as he could muster. 'Where's your mate?'

The sock, to James's delight and Remus's amazement, snarled. No one could quite explain the snarl, as socks can't technically manage the expression, but there was some decidedly choleric bunching of fabric and a low-level growling noise.

'Oh so you know, do you?' Peter cried, getting into the spirit of the thing and giving the sock a threatening shake. 'Where is it?' The sock wrinkled further, giving the impression of fangs bared in challenge. 'Ha! Playing hard to get, are you? I'll show you –'

The sock lunged. Peter shrieked – a poor decision, as basically the only bellicose manoeuvre a sock can execute is to shove itself into someone's mouth. The yells were soon muffled as he and the sock waged war over control of Peter's left molars.

'That's disgusting,' Remus mumbled.

'That's why you never leave them alone,' James, owner of a much-prized pair of lucky socks, replied smugly. 'When they're together, they've got someone of their own sort to argue with – leave one of them by itself, and, well, it turns.' Remus was staring at him oddly, but James took no notice. 'And never, ever wash them.'

'That explains so much,' Remus said drily.

'Why's Pete brushing his teeth with a sock?' Sirius asked from just inside the doorway, his head tilted to one side as he watched the battle.

'He made it an offer it couldn't refuse,' James said, forgetting all about the sock-war in the face of Sirius's arrival. 'Never mind that though,' he added as Peter began to make what were definitely smothered battle cries of "Never! You'll never take me alive!". 'We've got to get this sorted.'

Remus looked between his two friends and decided that this was going to be a Plan. Not a plan, but a Plan with a capital 'P'. Lower case 'p' plans could be discussed in front of anyone, but big Plans, well, they were secrets. Marauders only. Without waiting for the opening ceremony, he slipped into the toilet to check for Clive. It was empty; perfect. When he returned to the dormitory, Sirius was bolting the door and James was pulling four chairs into a square (they'd wanted it to be a circle, but that didn't work because four always means sides or corners, which was why they'd decided not to have a table).

The three not currently battling an article of clothing paused to look down at Peter. 'We'll just let him have his fun, yeah?' James suggested, and the others nodded. It looked like Pete was going to need rescuing anyway, so they might as well wait until the thrashing had died down.

'Right, so, do we technically have to call to order?' Sirius asked. 'Only I don't have my ring – er, it sort of –'

'Me either, keep losing the bloody thing –'

'Mine's somewhere –'

They all looked at one another and nodded: the rings were kak. And they'd got them out of a holiday box (alright, eight holiday boxes – they were growing boys, after all) of Grindle's Monstrous Macaroons back in second year, so they weren't exactly valuable. 'Maybe we could stop doing the bit with the rings?' Remus suggested. 'I mean, we've never managed to create a fifth elemental being with our combined powers–'

'Not that we've really been trying,' James hastened to add, just in case any eavesdroppers might be questioning their prowess.

'Exactly,' Remus agreed, 'barely any effort at all.'

'So let's just, you know, retire them,' Sirius nodded. 'And if they've already been accidentally lost – say, sent through the wash and melted – well, that's okay then.'

'Definitely,' Remus and James agreed, not wanting to mention that their rings had been swallowed by a marauding cat and lost somewhere in the bowels of a potions set respectively. It was the thought that counted, right?

'Excellent.'

'It's about these knickers,' James said in a rush before any of the other pledges, promises, obligatory declarations in invented languages and extra-secret handshakes could be performed.

'Knickers?' Remus repeated.

'Oh fuck,' Sirius groaned, dropping into his chair and putting his hands over his face. After a moment he parted two of his fingers and one grey eye peered malevolently up at James. 'This is all your fault.'

'I know,' James said, almost wringing his hands (Marauders didn't really wring their hands, they just sort of, you know, twisted their fingers around – a very different thing).

'I mean honestly Prongs –'

'Mea culpa! Mea culpa!' James cried. 'I know - I've got serious inferiority issues, perhaps even a complex – '

Remus snorted.

'- and therefore I'm constantly worried about my image and proving myself worthy and I say things before I think them through,' James was going on, clearly distressed. 'But we're not losing to a Slytherin! We're not!'

Remus sat back in his own chair, crossing his arms. So this was what had come of that little breakfast meeting the day before. After Wythe & Co had left the table, Remus had been tempted to ask what exactly the encounter – conducted in furious whispers too far away to be heard – had been about. But he knew that, given James's miserable realisation of "I've done it again" coupled with Sirius's "Speak to me and you'll draw back a nub" expression, asking wasn't the best idea. And then they'd gone back to the common room and Sirius had embroiled himself in that horrible scenario with Grace and gone off to brood and of course they couldn't talk Marauder business without all the Marauders… and somehow all through classes and meals today, the opportunity had never come up. It might have been Sirius's strange mood – he wasn't precisely angry but he was definitely thinking something over – or it might have been the fact that everyone had been so quiet. Clive had been with Claudia, Rob had been in detention, Zeke had been staring moodily at his newly ex-girlfriend. And then there'd been Ze, almost managing to be normal, except for those moments when she was chewing on her lip, almost like she had a secret…

'- it's got to be you!' James was saying to Sirius. 'I've never talked a girl out of her answers to Divination homework, let alone her pants –'

'I haven't either!' Sirius was replying hotly.

'But you and Grace –'

'Look, I'm pretty sure it was not talking that got me –'

'Aren't you both forgetting something?' Remus asked calmly, waiting for his friends to turn and stare at him.

'What?' they chorused.

'Oh…just that little bet we made on Saturday,' Remus said lightly. 'You know, the one that says you won't engage in any sort of sexual contact – the one that means you can't go off and seduce some girl into loaning you her underpants?'

'Oh fuck,' Sirius said again, his hands going back over his face.

'I don't see that that's a problem…' James began, sounding completely unsure.

'Prongs, no girl in her right mind – hell, no girl with a mind – is going to let you have her knickers without some form of persuasion,' Sirius said, his voice muffled by his hands. 'In fact, you might actually have to declare love and possibly marriage – and even then, you'd probably have to nick them when she wasn't looking and make a run for it before she's started to get dressed. Girls like wearing knickers. I think it has something to do with looking good from the inside out,' he added, realising that he was babbling to cover the rising tide of worry.

'Don't see why - they're not very comfortable,' James mumbled in reply, and Remus and Sirius turned wide-eyed stares on him. 'What?' he cried. 'You're the ones who hexed me into Evans's pants at the start of term –'

'Let's not argue,' Remus said with a sigh, not wanting to get back into that. 'Why do you need girls' underwear anyway?'

Sirius shot James an exasperated glare and turned to Remus. 'Remember all that rubbish Wythe was saying about James being a poof?'

Remus nodded, 'Yeah – s'what he always says.'

'Yes, well, James here couldn't take it this time – had to go and prove he's a man-'

'I am a man!'

'Well no one would call your masculinity into question if you didn't go around trying to prove it all the time!' Sirius cried.

'What did we say about not arguing?' Remus reminded with carefully projected calm, wondering if they let werewolves work in kindergartens – he certainly had the training for it…

'It's not me proving I'm a man,' James snapped, 'it's just – it's just –'

'It's just he bet Wythe he could talk a girl out of her knickers when we all know the only girl James has eyes for probably wears a chastity belt –'

'Lies!' James cried, interrupting Sirius. 'We know Evans wears knickers because we've seen them – I've worn them!''Wouldn't shout that too loud,' Sirius muttered darkly.

'Well, I have,' James huffed. 'And all we need is a pair of girls' pants – a worn pair.'

Sirius shot him a horrified glance. 'What the bloody hell makes you think that?!'

'Well it's not like a girl is going to carry around a clean pair of pants in her bag, just in case,' James pointed out. 'So they've got to be –'

'Don't say it,' Sirius warned.

'You actually did this?' Remus asked, staring at James with wonder. 'You actually bet someone that you could- could - secure,' he said, for lack of a better word, 'a pair of girls' underpants?'

'Yes,' James nodded miserably.

'That is so stupid,' Sirius growled.

'That is so cliché,' Remus sniffed. Both James and Sirius turned incredulous stares on him. 'What? You can't honestly say that it's an original idea – I mean, people have been using that one since- since –'

'Since loin cloths were invented?' Sirius suggested wryly, one brow quirked.

'Yeah,' Remus agreed. 'And it's stupid anyway – everyone knows you just nick them from her laundry and say she gave them to you.'

'Done this before have you?' James asked tartly.

'At least he's got an idea,' Sirius shot back. 'You're just sitting here blathering about wearing Evans' knickers –'

'What did we say about not arguing?' Remus repeated in his best teacher voice. Both of his friends turned to look at him with the faces of five year olds caught eating paste. 'Right,' Remus sighed. 'Looks like you're going on a Raid.'

'Yeah,' Sirius agreed, rubbing his face with his hands in an exhausted manner.

'We should probably wait till they've all gone off to study,' James added woefully, and the others nodded, being old hands at breaking into the girls' dormitory.

Something thumped on the ground behind them, followed by a desperate squeak of defeat. Remus heaved a sigh. 'And someone should get the sock off Peter.'

*.*.*

'So?' three voices chorused as Peter Pettigrew, looking slightly sweaty, closed the door to the boys' seventh and leant heavily against it. It was well after dark but the Marauders were nowhere close to going to bed. In fact, they still had loads to do, and they needed to get on with things or they were going to be surrendering James's dignity to a Slytherin.

'S'almost clear,' the dumpy boy said, his breathing heavy and erratic – even in rat form he was no athlete. But, his being the smallest and most agile of their animagus forms, he was the logical choice to scout the situation on the girls' dormitory. 'S'just Ze, and she's gathering her things up to go to the library or something,' he reported.

'Zaz's going to the library?' Sirius asked blankly.

'We have got that Divination chart due…' Remus mumbled. 'Although I'd think a large drink would be more help than emergency revision.'

'If you had enough you'd probably even believe what you were writing,' Sirius agreed.

'Yes, but the pants,' James interrupted, not willing to be deterred: the affirmation of his manhood rested on the response.

'Um, didn't see any pants,' Peter replied carefully, his eyes flickering back and forth between them almost nervously.

'It's a girls dormitory,' Sirius said bracingly. 'Where there are girls, there are knickers.'

'Yes, but we need –'

'What time are you set to meet Wythe?' Remus asked, still sounding vaguely disdainful – for someone who was generally thought of as "responsible", he was awfully snobby about the unoriginality of Wythe's dare.

'Eleven,' James said, glancing at the clock. 21;34.

'She's left the studying a bit late,' Sirius mumbled, and James shot him an odd look. 'Sorry – just thinking we've been waiting ages for them to empty the room out.' James was still eyeing him carefully and so he hurried to add, 'Do we know where the others are – Dorcas and Serena and,' he swallowed, 'Grace?'

'Uhhhh…' Peter trailed; that hadn't been part of his assignment. 'Didn't see them…'

'We'll just have to hope they don't come back anytime soon,' Remus said with the air of someone relying heavily on possibility and knowing it was a bad choice.

'Think Ze's gone by now?' James asked hopefully, opening the door a crack and peering into the stairwell, as though he could see through the various stone walls, bits of furniture, and people that blocked his view into the girls' dormitory.

'She followed me down,' Peter replied proudly. 'Didn't step on me once.'

Sirius and James exchanged a glance and drew identical deep breaths. Remus nodded, ready to review the Plan. 'Right, the two of you are going it alone – Pete and I will be in the common room. If any of them come back, we'll delay them and give you the signal in the mirror. You've got yours, haven't you?' he asked Sirius, who nodded – they had agreed that for security purposes Remus would need James's half of the mirror-to-mirror communication system they'd used for years. Sirius's own small glass was securely in the pocket of his trousers – side, not back, because that could get, er, sticky, if one didn't mind the pun… - and if Remus activated his end of the link, they would know it was time to abandon ship.

James and Sirius quickly took up inspection stance, arms behind backs, spines straight, eyes at attention. It was time for The Review.

Remus paced in front of them in an excellent impersonation of a drill sergeant. 'Wands?' he barked.

'Check,' Sirius and James chorused.

'Map?'

'Check.'

'Masks?'

'Che-' James began, but Sirius was hurrying to his trunk and pulling out a long strip of black material.

'Check!' Sirius said, hastily shoving it into his pocked along with the mirror. Remus gave him a look that was frighteningly reminiscent of McGonagall. 'Won't happen again,' Sirius mumbled, cowed and practically scuffing his toe.

Remus glared for a moment more and then returned to barking out queries. 'Emergency dungbomb to cover a hasty and unplanned retreat?'

Sirius and James eyed one another warily and then performed a quick hand of Wand, Robe, Troll Club. Sirius won with a clever feint of wand-to-club and James groaned. 'I'll smell like it for a week,' he complained as he shuffled the weapon into his pocket.

'Right, so, we're ready,' Sirius said, turning on his heel. He'd taken half a step when Remus cleared his throat. Sirius looked back to see his friend eyeing him in an expectant manner. 'What – we've got everythi-'

'You might want to put a shirt on,' Remus explained patiently.

'Yeah,' James sniggered. 'We can't have our poppet catching a chill.'

Sirius glanced down – he'd completely forgotten. Never a fan of collars and cuffs, he'd stripped out of his school kit hours ago, and somehow never got completely dressed again. He had on one of his ancient pairs of black trousers, but was definitely missing the top half. 'Huh,' he said, crossing to his bed and, after a moment's hesitation, grabbing up the shirt.

He'd spent the better part of the day trying to figure it out, to decide whether he was angry or relived or hurt that she'd returned it like that. The only thing he'd been able to definitely decide on was that Grace was shallow and insecure, and while he felt sorry for her, he didn't like her all that much. That particular realisation had helped to ease the clenching worry, and while he still felt pangs of something he'd rather not think about, he was loads better than he'd been last night, or even this morning. And so he slid the shirt over his head, smiling as the ancient cotton slid over his skin, familiar and right. It didn't even smell like Grace – at least she hadn't sprayed it with any of that awful perfume – it just smelled like his favourite thing in the world. He turned back around to see his friends watching him carefully. Peter didn't want to meet his eye, but Remus and James, while looking slightly discomfited, had no trouble. 'Thought that'd gone the way of the Humpbacked Horntail,' James said after a tight moment.

Sirius managed a shrug. 'It found its way home.'

Peter opened his mouth to say something awkward, but Remus stepped on his foot and he desisted. Sirius met their gazes with the closest thing to nonchalance he could muster. 'It's a bit tight,' Peter finally squeaked.

Sirius shrugged again, shifting slightly, well aware that the shirt, which had been enormous on his skinny nine year old frame, was now rather closer to being painted on to his seventeen year old self. It would stretch though, wearing in, and soon it wouldn't look so… 'Has it been chewing holes in itself?' James asked, leaning in closer to inspect the rather frayed hem. 'My lucky socks do that when they get bored – or angry.'

Sirius barely suppressed his sigh of relief as the tension faded. 'That's the thing about having just one lucky shirt,' he told his friend. 'It already knows it's the favourite, so it doesn't have any ambitions toward world domination.'

*.*.*

'How is this possible?' James asked twenty minutes later, his hands running repeatedly through his hair, which looked positively electrified. 'How?'

'I dunno,' Sirius replied in equally confused tones.

They were standing in the centre of the girls' dormitory, which was – and they'd looked, so they knew – completely devoid of suitable knickers. Oh, there were plenty of clean knickers, all tucked away neatly in trunks and wardrobes. But there were no – no - I can't say it Sirius thought desperately. It's just too…wrong. It's not even pervy, it's just WRONG.

'Where do they keep them?' James asked dazedly, his rather formidable mind currently absorbed with the task of locating the secret panel – girls did like secrets, especially other people's – behind which they hid their dirty laundry. 'I mean, shouldn't they just be on the floor? Or under the bed?'

'Maybe they don't have any,' Sirius suggested. He'd meant it as a joke, but the moment the words were out he and James's eyes locked, and they both had to clear their throats and look away.

'If they don't have any,' James whispered, sounding half-strangled. 'Then that means they don't wear any –'

'Don't even say it,' Sirius growled, sweat beading on his upper lip. 'Don't even say it – we've got to concentrate on the task at hand –' James opened his mouth to make (judging by the smile spreading across his face) a wonderfully pervy comment, but Sirius shoved his hand out and said, 'No! Concentrate! Knickers!'

'But there aren't any!' James hissed back. 'There's just clean ones and those won't do!'

'How'll Wythe know – you're just going to hold them up and let him see – '

James's cheeks darkened and Sirius groaned. 'Er, not exactly,' James began. 'He's going to use the Veritas–'

'The Veritas Charm,' Sirius nodded grimly, 'to make sure you're not lying. Yeah, I can see how that would work. But where are we going to get real, authentic – you know…'

James was looking around desperately. They'd already looked all over the floor, under the beds, and even in the loo (just in case). But girls didn't do things properly – there were no worn socks or pants mouldering in the corners. There wasn't even any week-old food left forgotten on a side table or under a pile of mostly-clean clothes. 'We've never had trouble finding them before,' he mumbled.

'Yeah, but we always took the clean ones,' Sirius pointed out. 'We've never looked for the – the – the other,' he managed. 'And either they knew we were coming and tidied up, or they don't have dirty laundry.'

James's eyes slid round to Ze's bed and the pile of rumpled clothes visible in the bottom of her wardrobe. 'Well, it looks like –'

'No,' Sirius said flatly. 'We are not going through her things.'

'This is an emergency!' James cried.

'She's our friend,' Sirius snapped back.

'I'm your friend and you'd loan me a pair of pants if I needed them,' James pointed out.

'Yeah, but I'm a bloke – that's different. And we haven't…asked,' he finished lamely, unsure of how to explain that Ze was off limits just…because.

'Oh yeah,' James snorted. 'Because asking would get us-'

'Shit!' Sirius yelped, jumping as his pocket vibrated and Remus's voice – identifiable for all that it was frenzied and desperately shouting – rang out across the room.

'ABORT!' Remus was shouting. 'ABORT!'

Sirius had jerked the mirror out of his pocket and he and James were peering down into Remus's frantic face, held so close to the mirror they could count his pores. 'What –'

'Get out!' Remus gasped desperately, and they could tell by the way the mirror was wobbling that he was moving rapidly. 'Code Five! It's gone to hell – Peter's down –'

'What?!' James cried.

'Code Five?!' Sirius echoed.

'RUUUUUNNN!' Remus yelled, and the mirror went dark.

'If this is a joke,' James began slowly, and then trailed off. Both he and Sirius looked at the door, and then slowly at one another, a tide of fear roiling up, widening their eyes and dampening their palms. Starting low, like far off thunder and growing ever louder was the unmistakable sound of feet stampeding.

'They could be coming up the stairs –'

'Fuck!'

There were now yells and screams and the sounds of furniture being overturned, and Sirius and James wasted no time in turning themselves invisible and, knocking into one another in their haste to get to the door, fleeing for their lives. The last thing they needed, after all, was to be caught in the girls' dormitory like, well, like this.

Unfortunately, in their haste, they forgot a few important things: such as the fact that the staircases are narrow, and that the girls' side doesn't welcome the feet of boys. Just as they threw open the door and skidded onto the landing, they saw a sight straight out of their nightmares: a wall of female bodies thundering towards them at ramming speed, their eyes filled with fear and the determined desire to flee.

'Stairs! They'll slide-' Sirius cried as their feet danced off of the jamb stone and onto the dreaded no-man's-land.

'Bollocks!' James shouted as the stairs let out a horrible clanging and everyone's feet went out from under them. Sirius and James braced themselves for impact with the stones and then, at the bottom, a heap of bodies…but they'd underestimated the desire to be away from whatever was going on in the common room. It was like rolling down into the path of a cyclone, or being attacked by an enraged badger. Screaming, yelling, cursing, and grabbing a-hold of anything they could reach, the girls ignored the laws of physics and gravity, and fought their way up the now-slippery, slide-like stairs.

It was a hideous fray – no one, first year or seventh, was spared, and in the true spirit of a punch up, she who is nastiest wins. Hair was pulled, clothes were ripped, nails were broken. Punching, clawing, scrabbling with legs and arms and elbows and feet, they hauled themselves through the pile of bodies towards the sanctuary of the dormitories. Tumbling straight through it all, Sirius and James were used as invisible punching bags, their bodies bouncing off of walls and over snarling girls as they helplessly rolled toward the battle below.

'Geroff you cow!'

'Let that go!'

'OOOmmpphh,' James shouted as a rather pointy shoe caught him in the stomach, driving the air from his lungs. He couldn't see Sirius, but he heard a definitely male (at least, he hoped) shout from somewhere below him, and trusted that his friend was getting it as badly as he was.

Finally, both too dazed to note their surroundings, the two boys tumbled to the common room floor, rolling into furniture and curling into tight balls of limbs instinctively as feet kicked around them, fleeing for the stairs. And then, suddenly, it was over. For several seconds they remained curled tight as bedsprings as they listened to doors slam at the tops of stairs as the silence slowly descended. At last they uncurled slowly, cautiously, sitting up and staring round at the wasteland that had once been their common room.

'Moony has some explaining to do,' Sirius grumbled as he shoved himself to his feet.

'S'like a war broke out,' James agreed, standing and nudging an overturned table with his foot. 'What happened?'

Sirius, who was wincing as he took stock of the pulls and bruises he'd acquired while, er, coming down the stairs, paused and looked around. 'I have no idea,' he finally admitted. 'But I'm sorry we missed it.'

'Me too,' James agreed, rumpling his hair as his face set with a determined frown. 'But we'll worry about it later – we've got knickers to find.'

Glancing around at the wreckage, Sirius grinned: Marauders never said die.

*.*.*

Ze was yawning by the time she gave the Fat Lady the password into Gryffindor tower. Whether that was because of the hour, or because the Library had the power to suck one's soul out through one's eyes whilst they were perusing the pages of a book she did not know. Nor did she care. Mostly, she just wanted to crawl into bed. It wasn't very late, barely half past ten, but then she hadn't slept much the night before, so… Stifling another yawn she crawled through the portrait hole and stopped dead. The common room, usually relatively crowded at this time of night, was deserted. And not just deserted but…wrecked. Chairs overturned, tapestries and paintings empty of their usually-loquacious subjects, and what looked to be several rolls of finely shredded parchment.

'Weird, in'it?' someone asked, and Ze turned to see Sirius and James standing in the centre of it all, both looking a bit woozy.

'What happened?' she asked, ambling over to her friends and taking in the details of their appearance: namely, that they looked to have been through the mill – and a rather vicious, sadistic mill at that.

'Search me,' Sirius shrugged, trying to be nonchalant.

'Looks like someone did,' she said dryly, pointing to his face, where his lip was nicely split and one eye was beginning to blacken. 'Is Lily just indiscriminately throwing punches now, or did she mistake you for James and take revenge for her ruined essay?'

James looked around speculatively, eyeing the shredded parchment. 'You might be right about the essay,' he murmured. 'But the rest of it, we really don't know.'

'And the bruises are a sort of…group effort,' Sirius added, probing his jaw and wincing when he hit a sore spot.

This immediately had Ze's suspicions jumping to attention, her eyes raking over them again, noticing that they were both dressed entirely in dark clothing – definitely not a coincidence – and that a length of black fabric with what looked suspiciously like eyeholes was dangling out of James's trouser pocket. Her eyes flickered over Sirius, and her stomach clenched when she saw that he was wearing the shirt – and that she had been right, it was rather small on him. Not that it was a bad thing…

For his part, Sirius was feeling faintly embarrassed: Ze was eyeing his shirt with an odd expression, and he suddenly felt unaccountably ridiculous for wearing it – it was too tight, and he looked like an idiot –

'So,' Ze said dryly, her attention snapping back to their faces. 'What were you nicking from us this time?'

'Nicking?' James repeated too innocently. 'What makes you think we're trying to steal something from you?'

Ze rolled her eyes. 'Oh, I don't know – maybe it's the black clothes and the Robin Hood masks? Or it could be the fact that you look like you've recently been victimised by a rampaging mob…which makes me think of your tendency to sneak into our dormitory and "borrow" things, which usually incites a rather rampaging-mob-like feeling amongst my fellow seventh years, because they don't like their diaries and knickers and things going missing. That, and there aren't any boys in Gryffindor who could beat you up, so yeah, what were you nicking from us this time?'

Sirius started to lie, but James cut him off with a rather desperate sigh of, 'Knickers – we were trying to steal knickers.'

'Huh,' Ze muttered, not looking as though she cared in the least about the object of their larcenous intentions. 'I'm staying down here then – she'll be looking for that dog.'

Sirius and James exchanged nervous glances as Ze dropped her bag onto a nearby chair. 'Er, dog?'

'Yeah,' Ze said, waving her hand to indicate that this was par for the course. 'Dorcas. She swears there's this massive black dog that steals everyone's pants. It doesn't seem to bother her that dogs don't wear pants, or that they aren't allowed in the castle…it's a massive black dog, and she's going to find it.'

'Oh,' Sirius said with a slightly strangled nod. 'That's, um, haha.'

Ze shot him a speculative look, but turned to James and said, 'what're these knickers for, anyway? Need them in one of your weird bonding rituals? To settle a bet?' she added with a twinkle in her eye.

Sirius felt his ears go red, and James began to stutter. 'No…not precisely, we, er, um, we – that is – '

'It's for research,' Sirius blurted, and then thought What? Research? Where did that come from?.

'Research eh? Well whose did you take?' she asked, clearly enjoying both their discomfort and the idea of the prank. 'Please say it was –'

'We didn't take any,' Sirius managed, just as James said, 'No one had, er, the sort we needed…'

Now Ze's brows were inching toward her hairline. 'The…sort?' They both shifted uncomfortably. 'What precisely were you looking for? Because really, there's all "sorts" up there, and I'd imagine that between Grace and Serena – and Lily – you'd have been able to find it. Unless you were looking for something in leather –'

'No, no, nothing like that,' James choked out.

'Were they the wrong size then?' she pressed, grinning broadly. 'You could probably charm them to fit you, you know –'

'No!' Sirius, closing his eyes to shut out the image that was forming. 'No! We, um, that is to say James -'

'Well it wasn't just me –' James began hotly.

'He needs pants that are-are – used,' Sirius said.

'Used?'

Did she have to look so confused? Couldn't she just understand, and save him the embarrassment of explaining? 'Yes, you know…used.'

Ze looked back and forth between them, still not understanding – once you'd worn a pair the first time, weren't they technically "used"? Because they wouldn't be "new" anymore… She shook her head. 'I don't think I'm getting it…'

'I can believe that,' James grumbled, 'seeing as there wasn't a bloody pair of "used" ones to be found. Where do you keep them anyway? I mean, unless you don't wear them in the first place, you just keep them around for appearances –'

Realisation dawned, and Ze felt decidedly light-headed. 'Were you looking for dirty knickers?'

Sirius winced and James did a fair impression of a ripe tomato. Unable to speak, they both nodded, completely mortified. She stared between them, completely at a loss.

'You do realise that, in addition to being horribly invasive, completely perverted and a total breach of privacy, that that's disgusting?'

'Yes,' they both said in very small voices.

'And that you shouldn't be doing it?'

'Yes,' they repeated.

'Well then if you knew and you still did it, why didn't you just nick them from the laundry?' she asked exasperatedly.

Both their heads snapped up, shock writ clear across their faces. Why wasn't she screaming, backing away in disgust, fainting? Why was she, why was she – wait, had she said "laundry"? 'The what?'

'The laundry,' she repeated slowly and clearly. 'You know, the place all your dirty clothes go when you drop them down the little chute?'

'Chute?'

She stared at them disbelievingly, having the strangest urge to laugh at the utter confusion in their eyes. 'The laundry chute,' she said. They exchanged a baffled glance. 'You mean you've never used the laundry chute?'

Another glance. 'Er, no?'

'What do you do with your clothes then?' she asked, equally perplexed.

'Um, well, mostly they're in my trunk and my wardrobe,' James began.

'And, you know, on the floor,' Sirius added, wanting to be honest and up front about something.

It might have been funny, she reflected, if it hadn't been so horribly…gross. 'Yes, but when they're dirty, what do you do with them?'

'Er…the same thing?'

Ze blanched and felt her stomach go a bit peaky, like she might be sick. 'Do they ever, er, get washed?'

'Well yeah,' James said brightly. 'When the smell gets really awful they just sort of disappear and then they're back, all folded and clean. I think it's the house elves,' he added conspiratorially, looking pleased with his powers of deduction.

'So you just keep wearing them over and over, until they're so foul they're a danger to your health?'

'Mmmm…yeah, basically.'

The look on her face was a mix of scepticism and revulsion, and Sirius felt the need to explain their actions. 'We're just being economical, wearing things more than once. You do the same- there's loads of already worn stuff in your wardrobe,' he added in rather defensive tones.

He'd been in her wardrobe? Bloody hell. Concentrate, she ordered herself. Task at hand. 'Things like trousers and jumpers yeah, but knickers?' she asked, shaking her head. 'You can't wear knickers twice.'

'Sure you can,' James said. 'You just turn them around.'

Sirius had never actually seen anyone's lip curl in repugnance before, but he thought Ze did it rather well. 'That's disgusting,' she said.

'You mean, girls don't…'

'No,' she said with a slightly disturbed, definitely revolted laugh, 'girls don't.'

'But you do, you know, wear… I mean, you don't, you know, go without? Pants, that is,' James clarified, sounding almost hopeful that she'd say girls did.

'Go without pants? Go without pants while wearing a skirt in a Scottish winter? Talk about drafty,' she snorted.

'Oh,' he said, definitely disappointed. 'Um, well, could you point us to the laundry then?'

She was now looking definitely bamboozled, and Sirius watched as she rubbed her nose. It was sort of…cute. And then she opened her eyes and looked dead at him and asked, 'Do I want to know why you need dirty knickers?'

Sirius thought for a moment. 'Um, probably not. But we could tell you, if you like.'

She flashed him a grin. 'Maybe when it's not so urgent.' She eyed their clothes again. 'I assume you've got to have them by a specific time?'

James glanced at his watch. 'Bollocks – yeah – twenty minutes.'

'And this is important – really important?'

'It's a matter of honour,' James said stiffly.

Ze rolled her eyes. 'Right. Matter of honour – knickers, it all makes sense in the end,' she said, her words dripping sarcasm. 'You're not going to give them to someone, are you?'

'No!' James and Sirius chorused. 'We'd never do something like that –'

'I didn't think so,' she assured them, coming to a rapid decision and telling herself that she could trust them and she wouldn't regret it. After all, they'd do the same for her she was sure. She nodded. 'I just wanted to make sure. Now turn around.'

'Eh?' Sirius said, having watched the play of expressions across her face and knowing that something important had been going on.

'Turn around,' she repeated.

'Why?' James had to ask.

'Because I'm not going to take my knickers off while you're watching,' she snapped back.

'You – you –'

'You mean you'd – you'd trust us with your pants?' Sirius asked, aghast. 'You'd give them to us…just because?'

Another eye roll. 'No, I'll give them to you because you need them, and I'll trust you because I'm an idiot like that, and if you lose them I'll bloody well have your guts for garters. And since you know your balls are on the line if you do mess it up, I'll trust you more with my pants than some pair you might nick from the laundry. Now, do you want them or not?'

'Yes please,' James said in a small voice, and he jerked Sirius around by the shoulder. For his part, Sirius was stunned. This was incredible. Unbelievable. Lifesaving. And selfless – on Ze's part it was truly selfless. She was giving up her pants. For them. If ever there had been an affirmation of friendship…and then he heard the sound of fabric sliding over skin, and thoughts of friendship completely disappeared.

With their backs turned, before she could fully comprehend how stupid this was, Ze slid her pants down over her hips, stepped out of them and then, her cheeks heating in a furious blush, folded them up into a tiny ball. Was she really going to do this? Just hand them over with a cheery "here you are – mind you don't lose them"? Was she mad? Well, probably. 'Alright,' she said shakily, all her previous nonchalance gone. 'You can turn around again.'

They both turned hesitantly, and instead of looking at her hand, both looked at her skirt. Then they swallowed, closed their eyes, and swallowed again. And something inside Ze, some small part of her that never spoke up, began to grin. Heh heh heh, it said smugly. At least someone knows I'm a girl. And then James nudged Sirius, who opened his eyes and swallowed again. 'Well go on,' James said, his voice slightly raspy.

Sirius's eyes widened, and his pulse jumped in his throat. His eyes flickered from Ze's face to her hand to James in one wild motion. 'You're the one who-'

'Oh just take them,' Ze said, torn between embarrassment and amusement, and shoved them into Sirius's hand. 'I want them back though - tomorrow. And you'd better not tell anyone where you got them.'

'No, of course not,' James said, trying to look trustworthy and conservative despite the fact that he was sweating profusely.

'Right, well, um, you'd better go then…' Ze said, clasping her hands behind her back to keep from wringing them nervously.

'Yeah,' Sirius said weakly, positively shaking. He was holding Ze's knickers. Just plain white cotton knickers. And they were still warm, and it was beyond pervy and he was fairly sure he was going to spontaneously combust of either embarrassment or- or -

Calling on some hidden reserve of breezy cool – or maybe it was just that part of her that had laughed at their reactions taking over and giving her courage - Ze grabbed her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and walked toward the stairs. She looked over her shoulder at them, flashed a grin she truly felt, and said, 'Good hunting.' And then, feeling full of something she didn't quite know to label "female confidence", she was tapping lightly up the stairs, the hem of her skirt bouncing as she went.

Sirius and James were silent and still until the sound of the creaking door had died away and she was shut in her dormitory. Breathing shallow, body tingling, Sirius turned to stare unseeingly past James's shoulder. 'That was…'

'Um…'

'We never tell anyone,' Sirius said heatedly. 'Never.'

'No,' James agreed. 'Never.'

Still vibrating with tension, Sirius shoved the pants into his pocket and tried to pretend he wasn't thinking about them. 'Right. Let's get this finished.'


	13. They Say the Truth Gives You Wings

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 13: They Say the Truth Gives You Wings…

All her swaggering bravado gone by the time she reached the girls' seventh, Ze shut the dormitory door and promptly sagged against it, shutting her eyes and groaning. What had she just done?

'You stupid cow,' she moaned to herself. 'How could you?'

The answer, of course, was relatively simple: she'd wanted to. They were her friends. Albeit friends that got into more than their share of trouble, but friends all the same. And pants seemed a relatively small thing to loan – especially when they were in front of you, looking worried and embarrassed and boyishly in need of help. But once those wide, puppy eyes were out the door (with your knickers, mind you) the situation looked considerably different. I mean, knickers!

Ze had gone to school at Hogwarts long enough to know how much trouble could be caused by a pair of pants – or even the rumour of a pair of pants – falling into the wrong hands. Cecilia Breckinridge had practically had a nervous fit two years ago when she "accidentally lost" hers in a broom cupboard, and Leopold Holmes "mysteriously found" them. By the time Cecilia had found out what was wot her knickers had been seen (at two sickles a showing) by half the school. Ze wasn't nearly as flighty as Cecelia, but she had the sense to know that having your knickers star as the main attraction on the Hogwarts entertainment scene was Not A Good Thing.

And now Sirius and James were out wandering around with a pair of hers.

No one will find out, she told herself desperately. No one will ever know they're mine. And then that nasty little voice in the back of her head that always told the truth, especially when she didn't want to hear it, began to snigger. Oh shut your gob, it said mockingly. All anyone has to do is look – you're the only girl in the whole bloody school who wears plain white cotton pants. Not a bit of lace to be seen, no tapes, no strings – no one else has knickers that plain. Ze groaned again and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. Yeah, but all that stuff ITCHES, she retorted, grasping at her only hope. Surely there was someone else out there who felt the same – everyone couldn't like the feeling of a bit of string flossing their arse. It was impossible that she was the only girl in the whole bloody school who wore the sort of pants that came in a packet from Marks & Spencer and didn't require an untangling of laces to put on. So yeah – no one would know, because there were loads of plain white knickers out there. But then again, all one needed was a decent tracing charm and it would be easy to see whose they were… Please, she begged whatever higher powers might be listening, please just let them get back safely – no losing things, no duels. Just let them bring my knickers back safely.

As prayers went, it wasn't going to win any prises for selflessness, but it was better than nothing. How could you be so stupid? she asked herself angrily as she stomped over to her bed, fiendishly glad she had the dormitory to herself, not caring that it was a bit late for the others to be out. How could you do that without even THINKING? They're not exactly known for their discretion, you know – their pranks yes, but not their discretion -

Suddenly Ze got a very sick feeling in her stomach. The sort that strikes when you know you've done something wrong, stuffed someone's life up. The sort that makes you feel guilty and nauseated and worried all at once. And she knew.

This was comeuppance.

This was what she got for meddling. All day she'd been plagued by nagging little doubts, bouts of conscience over stealing Sirius's shirt back. All day she'd been waffling between knowing it had been the right thing to do, and feeling like a horrible cow for doing it. And now she knew. Knew exactly how Grace felt, had felt last night when she'd waited until all the others had gone to bed before tearing her wardrobe apart looking for the shirt. While Lily and Serena dreamt peacefully and Dorcas's snores rattled the walls, Grace had taken every single stitch of clothing, every hair grip, every perfume bottle out of her wardrobe, looking for a shirt that was no longer there. Ze, ever a light sleeper, had cracked her eye open about the time Grace started chucking shoes across the floor and muttering, "Where is it – I know it's here" under her breath. Ze had lain in bed listening to Grace grow increasingly feverish in her mutterings, increasingly fervent in her search. The blond girl had been desperate, and then furious, and then something…something else. At the end she'd just sat staring in awful silence at the piles of things around her, unable to find what she needed.

In the dark, protected by night and the appearance of sleep, Ze hadn't felt sorry for Grace – it was rather impossible to feel sorry for someone who equated perfect hair with Divine Right, after all – but she had felt…guilty. Guilty for getting in between Grace and Sirius, for meddling in their business. Everyone knew that was a bad idea – what started between two people had to be finished between two people, and the fewer interferences, the better. But Ze had had to go and be the avenger, she'd had to do what was Right. Only she'd known - the whole time, if she was honest - that it wasn't right. It was just to make Sirius feel a bit better, even if it meant invading Grace's privacy. And even then, her motives had been a little muddled. Had she done it just to ease Sirius's misery, or had she done it because she wanted him to see the proof that Grace was a liar? And since it was dishonest either way, did it really matter?

Of course it really matters, the sly little voice of Inconvenient Truth said. You want him to look at Grace and see what a cow she is, and then look at you and see – Ze stopped the thought right there in its proverbial tracks, filing it away under Things That Are Too Big To Think About Right Now and leaving it for later. Much later. The point was, she'd stuffed it completely up. Sirius was in a muddle, obviously thinking Grace had returned the shirt, and not knowing why. Grace was in a strop, her normally sharp comments downright vicious, and it was clear she knew that something wasn't right with the situation. For her part, Ze had been trying to ignore it all day, deciding that if she just kept her head down and didn't say anything, all would turn out in the end.

And now Sirius and James had her pants and were heading off to some clandestine meeting. Destiny, thy jokes are cruel.

Maybe nothing will happen, the obnoxiously cheery bit of her mind said. Ha, she snorted back contemptuously. So much you know. But of course, the only thing left to do was trust them…and the only thing for that was to take directly to her bed.

*.*.*.*.*

Ze's eyes snapped open to stare at her canopy, her mind whirring, trying to figure out when it had stopped worrying about pants and sauntered off to dreamland. Dimly she realised that it was, in fact, morning – and a beautiful morning at that. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and she hadn't been woken by any bloodcurdling screams in the night – always a good sign. But there was still a low-level fear humming through her veins, and she knew the only thing to do would be to find James and Sirius immediately.

Shovelling herself out from beneath the covers she sat on the edge of the bed and watched as Lily, obviously fresh from the shower with her hair wrapped in a towel, hummed tunelessly and selected the bits of her school uniform. She didn't look enraged – no glowing eyes, no mottled skin – and Ze drew a massive sigh of relief. They hadn't been caught. Oh thank Merlin. If Lily was in a good enough mood to hum, then James Potter had been behaving himself and not causing her any grief. Which probably meant that Ze's knickers were safe, sound, and about to be returned. In fact, she could just pop over to the boys' seventh and get them right now-

'I am going to kill her!' Grace, wrapped in a towel and trailing water, stalked out of the bath, her face contorted with rage.

And, for once, Ze could agree with her: from within the depths of the loo, magnified tenfold by the powers of tile and a very devious acoustic, came a voice. Not the haunting, tear-inducing song of a siren, but the tone-deaf, warbling voice of a Dorcas. Grace had left the door open a bit and the sounds coming out were enough to melt wax out of ears. Definitely time to go and visit the blokes. Ze slid off her bed, gave herself a surreptitious sniff, and decided that a shower could wait. A clean uniform that was more or less presentably unwrinkled was scrounged from the pile in the wardrobe, and she was dressed in record time – not too soon, either, as Dorcas seemed to practising her scales this morning…

Wincing as Dorcas's voice tried to escape the register of human hearing, Ze slipped out the door and hurried down the steps, noticing that someone – probably the house elves, had tidied the common room and repaired the damage. The only sign that anything had been amiss the night before was the decidedly nervous way the portrait subjects would twitch whenever they heard the slightest noise. Grinning, Ze whistled tunelessly and pounded up the boys' stairs, nodding to a few third years, who nodded back. Her appearance in the mornings wasn't all that unusual, and since they barely seemed to register that she was there, let alone female, no one ever said anything.

She gave the seventh's door a perfunctory knock, tossed it open, and peered inside, prepared to see at least one or two of the boys snoring in their beds. At first it was a bit difficult to tell if anyone was there due to the mess – bed making was clearly on a par with putting dirty clothes in the bin when it came to important chores. But after a few moments of listening for telltale snorts and snores, she determined that she was looking at five haphazard piles of bedclothes and no human beings. Interesting…

'What're you doing over here?' Clive asked as he ambled out of the bath, his hair sticking up in the back, his tie hanging loose from his collar.

'Dorcas. Singing,' was Ze's only reply, and Clive needed no further explanation. 'Where're the rest?' she asked, gesturing to the empty beds.

'Dunno,' he shrugged. 'It was just Remus and Pete when I got back last night, and they were in it over something. Kept saying how Pete's socks had started it all, and arguing about whether the furniture had been destroyed. I think they meant the mess in the common room, but I didn't much feel like asking.'

'Mmm,' Ze murmured, the relief she'd felt shrinking away to nothing. She'd thought she'd just pop over and retrieve the knickers, but…if they'd come back to the dormitory they would have made noise. The others would have woken. They would have told Remus and Peter what had happened…but if they hadn't come back…if they'd been caught…oh bloody hell, if they'd lost-

'Zazzer,' Clive was saying, waving a hand in front of her face.

She shook herself, trying to focus. 'Huh?'

'You completely awake? Didn't fall on your head this morning, did you?' he asked, giving her a concerned once-over.

'No, course not,' she mumbled, fear uncurling hot and fierce in her stomach. They were gone. They had her pants, and they were gone. 'Did they come back last night – Sirius and James, I mean?' she asked quite rapidly. 'Were they here this morning?'

Clive was now watching her very closely, as though she were some sort of exhibit at the zoo. 'I dunno…'

'Try to remember,' she pleaded. 'It's really important. Have they been here at all?'

Clive was slowly shaking his head. 'Ummm…no?'

'Fuck,' Ze breathed, pressing her hand to her stomach. How could she have been so stupid? How?

'Are you sure you're alright? You look a bit...'

'I'm fine,' she said faintly, trying to think of all the possible things that could have kept Sirius and James out all night. It wouldn't be Astronomy homework, because they never did theirs, and it wouldn't be girls, because they couldn't touch them…

'Right,' Clive said, taking her word for it and shrugging it off. 'I'm meeting Claudia for breakfast – you walking down now, or you waiting for them?'

Her brain snapped back to the here-and-now, and she made her decision based on a very well known fact: where there is food, there are boys.

'I'll go down now.'

*.*.*.*

Sirius started awake at the unpleasant sensation of something splattering on his face. There was a gut-clenching sensation of semi-solid wetness and his eyes snapped open to see the pigeons cooing in the rafters above him, their tail feathers ruffling back and forth. His stomach turned and he tried very hard not to let out a piercing scream. A flash in the corner of his eye sent him diving to the left, narrowly escaping a second bombing.

James, however, was not so lucky. 'Oi!' he cried, sitting bolt upright and staring round wildly. 'Who's gobbing?'

If he hadn't already been victimised himself, Sirius would have howled with laughter at James, bird shit streaked down the side of his face, staring round dazedly and fumbling for his glasses. As it was, he could barely muster a dry chuckle. 'It's the birds mate – and it's not saliva.'

James had just located his spectacles and halted in the action of shoving them up his nose, his eyes clenched shut, his face a mask of disgust. 'Isn't it a bit early?'

This time Sirius did grin – it was just too easy. 'It's never too early for this shit,' he said with credible panache, and was rewarded with a faceful of water from James's wand, which left him spluttering indignantly and wiping away things he'd rather not think about.

James sniggered. 'Just thought you'd like a bit of help cleaning up,' he replied smugly, and Sirius sneered back before chuckling and wiping the last of the water from his face. Of course, he really ought to go and take a proper showe-

Suddenly reality came rushing back, first and foremost being the fact that he wasn't in his bed, he was sprawled in a pile of something that had once been straw. And then he recalled the reason he and James had been forced to kip in the old mews. Wythe. Pants. Teachers. Well, not teachers plural, just Slughorn after a late-night snack, but one teacher had been enough to summon the caretaker and the caretaker had broken up their little meeting and of course the bloody Slytherins had got seen and then they'd all had to make a run for it…

'S'lot to wake up to,' James mumbled, having come back to earth at roughly the same moment Sirius had.

Sirius was nodding dazedly, and then a bolt of fear whipped through his stomach, and he immediately moved into a crouch. 'You don't think it's still out there, do you?' he whispered, turning to face James, who swallowed visibly and shook his head very, very slowly. Sirius, resisting the urge to mumble a quick prayer, crept forward and pressed his eye to the keyhole in the ancient timber door.

It wasn't exactly a brilliant view, but so far nothing – say, a paw tipped in razor sharp claws – had attempted to come through and gouge his eye out. Which, considering their opponent, was a good thing. Having exhausted the narrow vista offered by the keyhole, Sirius took a long, deep sniff, searching for lingering hints of feral beast and mouldering fur. Nothing. 'I think it's gone off,' he whispered to James, who sagged with relief.

'You don't think it locked us in here, do you?' James whispered back after a moment, and Sirius had to give him a Look.

After all, they were talking about a cat. Yes, it was Popsy, the caretaker's decidedly vicious, undeniably demonic, unquestionably bloodthirsty attack beast…but it was still just a cat. There were limits. At least, he hoped there were. Then again, when one considered that Popsy had been known to make badgers run for cover and grown men cry, perhaps blockading the door on two teenaged boys wasn't so difficult to imagine. With half an ear, a quarter of a tail, and a decidedly piratical squint to his one working eye, Popsy could well be the devil walking the earth. He was of indistinguishable hue, had quit bathing several lives ago, and perhaps might even be a she – no one had ever gotten close enough to look.

But, all gender anonymity aside, Popsy was nothing short of dangerous. The beast had spent most of last night chasing Sirius and James through the castle on a lark, finally treeing them, as it were, in the old mews. He had then proceeded to sit before the door, in plain sight of the keyhole, and grin. Not the sort of grin that says "see, it's fun – won't you come out and play some more?" The sort of grin that says "oh yes, I've found my breakfast, and I'm just waiting for the waiter to bring me some mustard". Sirius and James, both nursing numerous wounds, several of them deep scratches from the claws of their captor, had decided they had more chance of surviving if they just waited it out in the smelly old tower. Even several hours on the rack in the dungeons – perhaps with a few thumbscrewings thrown in – would be better than Death By Popsy. And it had been almost dawn by then anyway. Privately, Sirius wondered if the caretaker didn't know that his wee kitty liked to corner people and hold them prisoner – if, in fact, the man didn't count on it as it saved him having to get out of bed in the dark of the night.

'Gives me the collywobbles, that thing does,' James hissed, rubbing a chill from his arms. 'Not natural for a cat to grin like that.'

'Mmm,' Sirius agreed. And then, realisation dawning: 'Why are we still whispering?'

There was a long pause as they both glanced around to reassure themselves that it was, in fact, just them and the birds. 'Dunno,' James whispered back, realised what he was doing, cleared his throat, and spoke again. 'Dunno,' he said in normal tones. 'What time is it?'

Sirius consulted his watch and grimaced. 'Half seven – come on, we've got to get out of here.'

He was standing even as he spoke, brushing ancient straw and a host of things he'd rather not think about off of his clothes, wincing as the aches and pains of a night spent sleeping in an abandoned birdhouse took hold. 'I feel like I've been run over by a hippogriff,' James groaned, stretching his back.

'You look like it too,' Sirius informed him with a grimace, knowing he didn't look any better. 'Come on.'

Wands at the ready, they edged the door open, peered around, and then hurried down the narrow, twisting stairs, through the trick door, under the decorative axes guarding the hidden archway and into the highest, dustiest, least used corridor in all of Hogwarts.

'Right,' James said brightly. 'You've got the map - which way to civilisation?'

*.*.*.*.*

Remus Lupin was getting a bit worried. It was getting on towards eight, which was getting on towards the end of breakfast and the start of class, and while Sirius and James might forego the latter, they'd never in six years and some odd days of school at Hogwarts missed the former. But then, given the circumstances, Remus supposed there was a first time for everything. He and Peter had been awake since dawn (well, a bit after dawn, to own the truth, and that had mostly been because Peeves had overflowed a loo…) and they still hadn't seen a sign of their friends. They'd left Clive snoring comfortably away in the dormitory and gone out to do a cursory check of all the probable locations – top of the Astronomy tower, bottom of the lake and, of course, the torture chambers down in the dungeons. But James and Sirius were nowhere to be found.

Peter was afraid that his socks, which had had it out in the common room the night before, destroying most of the furniture and starting a brawling stampede worthy of a John Wayne film before they made their escape, had somehow gotten James and Sirius. Remus feared the socks – which were now at large, woolly and dangerous – as much as the next person and was admittedly a little hazy on the details, but still, he was fairly sure that even Peter's socks couldn't manage to completely consume two mostly-grown boys. Still, he rather thought Peter was off checking broom cupboards for the grisly remains of Sirius and James. Why the socks would stash the evidence of their crimes in a broom cupboard was definitely beyond Remus, but there was always the chance Pete would stumble onto them just by dumb luck. And really, any luck at this point would be a good start, especially considering the Slytherins were looking horribly smug as he turned into the Great Hall to do another scan for James and Sirius.

Wait, what was that Wythe was showing to the rest of their quidditch side? And why were they all…laughing?

*.*.*

'Oi – breakfast's this way,' James called over his shoulder, and Sirius turned round to see that he was heading towards the stairs to the Great Hall rather than Gryffindor Tower.

'Yeah, but Ze's thisway,' Sirius pointed out impatiently. She might not have gone down to breakfast yet. There was still time… 'We've got to tell her,' he said miserably. 'We can't just let her, you know…walk into that unawares.'

Sirius's voice had been positively forlorn at the end, and James knew exactly how he felt: they'd completely arsed it up. Completely. With a sigh he pinched the bridge of his nose and did some uncharacteristically serious thinking. Finally he spoke. 'Wythe'll be at breakfast – you know he will, showing off. If we get there before her…'

Sirius glanced toward their dormitory, already trying to find a believable explanation of what had happened. But there wasn't one. Not even the truth was believable. James was right: at this point, all they could hope for was damage control. And, of course, that Ze would understand. And maybe, if they were very, very lucky, forgive them. Eventually. So perhaps the Great Hall was the proper place to go… That, and he could smell eggs and bacon and freshly buttered toast wafting up the stairs like a siren song. 'Okay,' he said, trying to dust the straw and filth off of himself as he moved to follow James. 'Breakfast it is.'

*.*.*

Pants. Wythe had some girl's pants. And he probably hadn't gotten them for himself. Where the hell were Sirius and James?

Remus whirled on his heel and got his answer, nearly slamming into them. And then he got a good whiff of their clothes, which sent him backward and teetering a bit on his heels in his haste to get away. 'Bloody hell, what happened to you?' he asked, forgetting all about the pants lying on the Slytherin table as he stared at his two best friends. They looked…awful. Bruised, dirty, their hair sticking up wildly, full of dust and bits of straw…

'Fell down some stairs,' they chorused by way of explanation.

'Then got into it with Wythe, and then a trick door, and then Popsy,' Sirius added. 'Have you seen-'

'Wythe?' Remus asked, processing the unbelievable response with astonishing alacrity. 'Yeah, he's just there –'

He turned to point the Slytherin out at his table, only to find that the object of his search was sauntering towards them wearing the nastiest grin anyone could ever hope to see. 'Well well well,' Wythe said.

'Oh that is so overused,' James sighed heavily.

Sirius barely heard him; he'd gone completely still, his entire being focused on Wythe's left hand. Or, more accurately, the bit of white cotton protruding from Wythe's fist. Through the red haze of rage overtaking his brain, one very important though managed to fight its way out: He's dead. He's dead, because I'm going to kill him.

'You lot are looking a mite tatty, aren't you?' Wythe sniggered as he gave them a look-over, his smile oily and hateful. 'Long night?'

Sirius let out a snorting breath eerily reminiscent of a bull preparing to charge, and James hurried to head off the storm. 'Let's dispense with the pleasantries, shall we?' he asked, returning Wythe's sneer.

'Oh you wouldn't want to disappoint your old mum, would you?' Wythe smarmed. 'Hate to have her thinking you hadn't minded your manner-'

'Give them back,' Sirius snarled.

'What was that?' Wythe mocked, his smile widening to a smug grin.

Sirius took a step forward, invading Wythe's space. 'Give them back or I'll beat you so bloody they'll have to fix you back together with –' James grabbed him by the shoulder, jerking him backward and shooting the teacher's table a glance: the last thing they needed was someone coming down to see what the discussion was over. The nearer part of the Great Hall was already falling silent as eyes turned their way, drawn as always by the scent of scandal.

But Wythe wasn't bothered. Instead, fuelled by the growing interest of the crowd, he played to the hilt. 'Ah Potter – you didn't tell us Black was the lovely lady who loaned you these,' he waved his fist in the air and several people close enough to hear sniggered on principle. 'Should have guessed though,' he added rather loudly, to accommodate their audience, sending Sirius a cheeky wink. 'They look just your size.'

'I'll kill you,' Sirius managed to grind out, his hands clenching into fists at the thought of getting round Wythe's throat.

Wythe started to say something else, clearly enjoying goading Sirius, but James headed him off. 'You're about to lose it completely,' he said, his voice hard and sharp and quite unlike the usual James. He too was leant in close to Wythe, his words for the three of them alone, despite the fact that most of the Hall was leaning in its seat, trying to hear. 'If you keep shouting and waving those around the teachers are going to take an interest, and how are you going to explain, eh? Just give them back, nice an quiet, and –'

'Give them back?' Wythe cried, fairly shouting with laughter. 'Give them back? They're not yours Potter, or had you forgotten?'

Dimly Sirius was aware that everyone had now stopped eating, and that Professor McGonagall was standing up and making her way round the table. But he didn't particularly care. If Wythe said one more word, if he so much as started to speak her name, Sirius was going to –

'Just give them back,' James was saying through clenched teeth. 'We'll return them to their proper owner and you can tell everyone that I lost –'

'Oh but you didn't loose, did you Potter?' Wythe was smirking, his eyes flicking over James's shoulder to the doors behind them. 'You did manage to come up with someone's knickers –'

'Fine, I'll admit I stole them –' James began, but Wythe cut him off, his smirk widening until it was a smug grin of epic proportions.

'Oh no need for that,' he chuckled sadistically. 'Let's just ask the lady herself, shall we?'

Sirius and James turned as one, gasping 'Zazzer?' as they moved.

But it wasn't Ze. If possible, it was worse. Sirius stared. James's eyes closed and his throat worked in a horrific swallow. And then Remus, rather disbelievingly, said, 'Lily?'

*.*.*

Ze's feet were fairly thundering down the stairs, and she hurried across the flagstones of the Entry Hall as quickly as she could without running. Probably it would look suspicious to run. Probably she ought to at least try to behave normally, just in case something had happened the night before. But even that couldn't keep her from muttering under her breath as she stalked across the room. She was so absorbed in her determination to find Sirius and James that she didn't even note that the usually noisy Great Hall was echoing with that elusive beast known as deafening silence. If they're here, she was thinking as she drew even with the doors, if they're just calmly having toast –

She skidded to a dead stop just before the doors, the silence registering at the same moment the unnatural stillness of every single one of the room's occupants did. And then her attention fastened onto the tiny knot of people just inside the Hall, and all thoughts flew right out of her head.

Wythe was stepping around Sirius, James, and Remus, who seemed to be frozen into a wall of bodies topped by gobsmacked faces. Wythe's fist was clenched round something, and he was approaching…Lily Evans?

Ze felt her stomach make an emergency exit to her knees. Oh piss.

'What's going on here?' Lily asked in her best Head Girl voice, not seeming to notice that even McGonagall was frozen in shock. 'Potter?' she said narrowly, when no one made any reply. James just made a nervous gulping noise, rather like a goldfish discovering it's landed outside its tank.

'You'll have to excuse him,' Wythe said in oily, unctuous tones as he came to a stop just in front of Lily. 'He's had a bit of a shock. See,' he continued conversationally at a volume that included the entire room, 'he wasn't expecting for you to ever find out the reason he borrowed these.'

He flicked his wrist. Lily went white. The entire Hall sucked in a collective breath, the walls practically bowing inward at the sudden suction. Ze could only stare, rooted to the spot, as Wythe unfurled her pants - her white pants – with a flourish Merlin himself would have envied. They hung from the pincer grip of his first finger and thumb, wavering gently like a bizarrely pornographic offering of peace.

It was a horrible moment. Wythe had to know what he was doing – had to know that there was no possible way the knickers belonged to Lily, that even if they did she would never loan them to James of all people. But the fact that both the Head Girl and Head Boy were Gryffindors had always rankled, and Wythe had masterfully orchestrated an opportunity to humiliate them both in one go. Every eye in the school was fastened onto the tableau at the front of the Great Hall, and it was easy to see that the gossips were already as frenzied as sharks in a sea of blood. Twenty versions of the "real story" would be circulating by lunch, and by supper everyone involved would be a victim, sacrificed by the ritual knife of gossip on the altar of Adolescent Angst.

Ze didn't know precisely how Wythe had ended up with the pants, but she had a feeling it had something to do with James and his bloody point of honour. Not that it mattered now. Wythe was smirking like the cat who'd swallowed the proverbial canary and James seemed to have abandoned his body for a world of mental self-flagellation. Sirius looked completely lost, his eyes fastened on the swaying fabric of the pants with an expression so totally dismayed it was almost comical. Remus looked as though he was trying to think rationally and finding that, under the circumstances, it just wouldn't work. And Lily…Lily was fighting back tears.

That was what did it for Ze. It didn't matter if they were tears of rage or tears of humiliation. Whatever else the rest of them had done, Lily didn't deserve to be publicly humiliated for it. Oh, sooner or later someone – probably McGonagall – would get to the bottom of it and discover that Lily hadn't had a thing to do with the whole debacle. But the rumours would already be out, dismantling every shred of Lily's credibility and utterly undermining her authority. No-one would care that she had top grades, or that she was nice and generous and clever, or even that she was the last person in the world who would loan out her underpants to James Potter. More importantly, no-one would ever forget. And just like that, Ze made up her mind. There would be time later to berate herself for her stupidity, to beat James and Sirius bloody, and to completely annihilate Wythe. But at the moment she owed Lily a little salvation. Her eyes closed for a brief moment, and she felt something – something that felt frighteningly like her dignity – slip out through her toes. And then Ze, heretofore unnoticed, stepped fully into the Hall and flashed Wythe a smile like a straight razor.

'I believe,' she said in a carrying voice, 'That those are mine.'


	14. But Who Needs Wings When You've Got a Br

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

banana kick: a kick designed to propel the ball in a curved trajectory, usually to get the ball round an obstacle such as a keeper or defending player. not exactly a sneaky move - just a good skill to have.

Chapter 14: …But Who Needs Wings When They've Got a Broomstick?

The silence was so complete you could have, as Jack's granddad liked to say, heard a cat pissing on cotton.

It stretched from the floor to the ceiling and wall to wall, a solid, tactile thing that filled sagging jaws and stuffed ears like so much wadding. Standing just inside the doors of the Hall, Ze felt as though she'd stepped inside an enormous dollhouse. In that numb, inanimate silence the tables stretching away before her might as well have been covered in cleverly carved and painted miniatures, the students and teachers just little wax- figures, their tiny doll faces drooping in shock, googling eyes fixed on something outside the realm of reality. Even McGonagall stood, rooted to the stone, a pared down parody of the strictest of schoolmarms.

If it hadn't been the furious thudding of the pulse in her ears, Ze would have sworn she was just a little wax doll, too.

And then an errant breeze, or perhaps just the flapping of a particularly large butterfly's wing, or even just a single gasp from somewhere in the room, sent the white cotton dangling from Wythe's fingers dancing. Just a bit. Just a tiny, tiny bit. And yet, it was enough. The movement seemed to release them from the spell, and Wythe's eyes bugged wider, his mouth working, issuing little pops and whistles in lieu of words. Soon, however, he would be shouting.

You nutter snarled that primitive bit of Ze's brain that, millennia ago, would have been warning her about things with sharp teeth. Get the pants. Luckily for Ze, her mind hadn't yet bred out the impulse to listen to the survival instinct. Two steps rang on the stone, and she was shocked to realise they were her steps, her feet. And then a slender hand was darting up to snatch the wavering fabric as frantic whispers began spiralling up toward the ceiling like smoke from enemy campfires.

'Who is that?'

'Dunno – never seen her before – '

'Look at their faces -'

Ze, her pulse no longer a discernable rhythm, just a rushing of blood in her ears, vaguely knew that they were all staring at her, those gobsmacked little dolls, that they were coming alive and watching with their wide eerie eyes. But it didn't matter. Bloody, bloody hell, just get me out of here, she thought frantically, whirling on her heel and making for the door. I swear I'll be good, I won't do anything, nothing, I'll be nice to little old ladies and I'll stop laughing at Dorcas and I'll be good, I swear just get me out please Merlin just get me out –

The doors were gaping before her, sunlight shafting before them, leaving their shadow like an open maw, but she didn't care. It was escape… Oh please just let me out, let me out, let me-

'MISS MERIDIAN!'

Oh fuck.

*.*.*.*

'What were you thinking!'

Ze wasn't precisely thinking – in fact, she wasn't sure if she was walking, or if Professor McGonagall was levitating her down the corridor. It was as though the non-physical bit of her had just said "to hell with this" and gone off on holiday, leaving her body alone and helpless. Her conscious mind was having no part of this, thanks, and was sitting just over her head, watching as she, escorted none-too-gently by McGonagall, headed up a long train of people winding up through the castle towards…somewhere.

'Of all the ridiculous, perverted, depraved -'

The words, pouring out of her head of house in a steady stream of thick Scottish brogue, rolled across Ze's mind but didn't make much sense. In fact, the whole world seemed to be very far away, like a lot of people shouting at her from the end of a very long tunnel: she was getting loads of echoes, but was a bit fuzzy on the actual words. She was dimly aware that she was being hauled round and round a staircase, and that there had been a funny looking gargoyle somewhere along the way. And then she was standing on a very muzzy carpet, wondering if those were just squiggly little lines, or if someone had been drawing a diagram of the creation of the universe…

'Headmaster!' someone cried in a rather pompously put-out voice, and Ze's head slowly rotated until she could see silvery hair and a long beard streaming over a pair of brilliantly purple robes. Oh, well, that was nice. She'd always liked purple…Framed by the doorway, Albus Dumbledore was listening patiently to an enormous walrus wearing a posh velvet waistcoat. 'Sir,' the walrus blustered, 'this is rather out of order, don't you think?'

'Out of order? It is, Horace, rather odd, I will grant you, but as we haven't yet begun a timetable of events, we can hardly say that things are out of order, can we?' was Dumbledore's reply, issued in a tone that seemed too jovial even to Ze's fog-coated brain.

The walrus, Professor Slughorn, the back of Ze's mind idly provided, spluttered most impressively, its moustache quivering with righteous indignation. 'But sir, surely you can't honestly believe – such goings on – ladies' undergarments – at breakfast –'

'Believe it? We all saw it, Horace,' McGonagall shrilled, her lips pursed in a very good impression of someone who sucks on lemons just for fun. 'We can hardly deny something that happened right before our very faces!'

'I demand evidence –' Slughorn cried, but McGonagall interrupted him impatiently.

'Mr Wythe was waving around a pair of ladies' unmentionables just minutes ago,' she said tartly, 'what more evidence do you need –'

'Oh ho!' Slughorn cried, taking his turn at the interrupting. 'That hardly counts for anything – I surprised this lot out last night,' he crowed delightedly as he pointed to James and Sirius, who were standing just in front of Remus and Lily in a small knot by the door. But Ze was in no mood to focus on paltry things like reality – whistling idly, her mind went soaring through the room, distantly admiring the eccentric collection of furniture…

'I suspect one of your own students was out as well!' McGonagall was accusing, pointing one long finger at Wythe, who couldn't seem to summon up a sneer in the face of her wrath.

'A trick!' Slughorn shouted, his normally ruddy face now positively maroon. 'Clearly Black and Potter were in on it, and this tart –' he pointed to Ze, '- must have been as well – '

The shouting continued, with Sirius and James now joining in. But Ze had stopped paying attention, her brain having stalled at the words "this tart". No one had ever called her a tart before. And she found that she rather didn't like it. However, the process of forming this thought, which ought to have taken seconds, was unfortunately delayed by Ze's current lack of mental acuity, and somewhere in the interim between "I don't fancy" and "slag", a Bloody Great Row broke out around her. When her eyes regained their tenuous focus, Remus was trying to pull Sirius off of Wythe, and James was being held back - by the scruff of his neck - by Lily. Dumbledore was stepping between McGonagall and Slughorn, preventing an out-and-out brawl, his usually benign countenance shifting to something more dangerous.

'I'm not a tart.'

In an instant the room stilled, the argument freezing in a tragically comic tableau. Sirius had hold of Wythe's collar and Wythe was jerking at Sirius's hair; Slughorn was puffed up with indignation and McGonagall was leant forward with a deathly gleam in her eye. Even James had gone still, Lily's fingers wrapped securely round the neck of his robes so that he hung forward a bit, his weight counterbalanced by the fabric. And yet, somehow in spite of all the ridiculousness, the silence was so absolute it positively had texture.

'Pardon?' Dumbledore said politely.

'I am not a tart,' said a voice, a voice that felt quite familiar. Funny – her mouth seemed to be moving too… 'And I'll thank you not to call me one Professor Slughorn,' the voice continued, 'especially considering you've never known I was a girl until this morning.'

Slughorn gaped. McGonagall gloated. Dumbledore's lips curved up in a small smile.

But Ze wasn't finished. 'Just because your darling Mr Wythe is perverted enough to nick a pair of my pants doesn't make me a tart anyway, so before you start telling people off maybe you ought to think about who it was that got victimised, yeah?'

McGonagall's eyebrows arched. Sirius and James's mouths snapped shut. Slughorn was blustering again, and Wythe – recognising that he was about to get fucked but proper – employed that age-old weapon: denial. 'Bollocks!' he cried hotly. 'It wasn't me that stole them –'

'Oh please,' Ze's mouth sneered, her brain still standing back at a distance and letting her remarkably diabolical subconscious do all the work. 'You nicked them from me last week, just after training.' This is really rather good, she thought bemusedly, and her mouth just kept moving. 'You're a right stupid git though, thinking I wouldn't notice they were gone-'

'Just a minute!' Slughorn, his mind finally catching up with his harrumphing voice, cried. 'He stole them from you? Impossible! He couldn't have – doesn't have access, doesn't even live in your dormitory-'

Every face swivelled from Slughorn to Ze as though watching a tennis match, but Slughorn's powers of deduction were no match for Ze's newfound skills at prevarication. 'I never said he stole them from my dormitory,' Ze said scornfully. 'He took them out of the changing rooms at the pitch – '

'From the girls' changing rooms?' an incredulous Slughorn shouted, his eyes bugging. 'He couldn't go in –'

'There are no "girls'" changing rooms, 'cos I'm the only girl!' Ze snapped, and the part of her observing the scene was quite aware that she was walking a very fine line between acceptable indignation and outright insolence, and that she was straying toward the latter. But the bit of her doing the talking didn't seem to care. 'S'not my fault you lot can't work it out that girls are just as athletic as boys. I've been on the side since second year and you've never bothered to notice, let alone provide me with my own bloody shower,' she snarled. 'No, I couldn't possibly need my own place to change out and clean up! It's alright if Ze has to go out of her way - it doesn't matter if no one knows she's on the side, or that she's a she - '

Ohhhkay, not the time! the sensible part of her shouted, desperately fighting for control of the vocal chords. Not the time to get into that! McGonagall began to say something but Ze, fighting with herself and winning, continued on, flattening the formidable professor with one strangled snarl.

'And then gits like him -' she growled, turning on Wythe who drew back out of sheer instinct, '-come in and think they can have me off by blackmailing me with my own underpants. He's been after them for ages you know- I'll catch him sneaking round after all the rest have gone up. And it is so sick but if I complain to anyone then I'm just some whingeing girl-' No, not that direction either! she thought desperately. 'So there's nothing for it but to tell him to piss off. And when his poor bruised ego can't take that he has to go after Lily 'cos he knows that'll get James's attention. And it's so bloody underhanded it drives me mad.'

"Mad" came out as a primordial growl, and Ze felt the hairs on her own nape standing at attention in some primitive response that evolution hadn't quite managed to wipe out; she could only imagine how Wythe, who was looking like a rabbit cornered by a particularly hungry fox, was feeling.

For a long moment there was stunned silence, as everyone took in the finer points of what was, indisputably, a completely mad but potentially believable account of recent knicker-stealing events. Slughorn was gaping, his bottom lip just visible beneath the impressive droop of his moustache. McGonagall, her keen eyes trained on Ze, seemed to be trying to decide whether she ought to nod approvingly or ring for the men in white coats. Lily's brows were investigating her hairline and Remus's head was tilted to the side with an almost avian curiosity. James and Sirius were watching her with something akin to reverence. Wythe looked close to pissing himself. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that Ze was practically baring her teeth, her eyes on his jugular.

And then Dumbledore smiled that oddly amused little smile. 'I believe, Miss Meridian, that you have raised several valid points regarding the state of our sport facilities. I thank you for your candid assessment of the present situation and can assure you that an immediate review will be conducted. But first, let us discuss the topic of detention…'

*.*.*.*.*

Remus could scarcely believe it. He'd been excused. Just like that. Over Slughorn's protests and McGonagall's sharp assertions, he and Lily had been sent on their way, leaving Ze, Sirius, James, and Wythe to face the inevitable punishment. From the moment Professor McGonagall's voice had shrilled out over the Hall, calling Ze back, Remus had been sure that they were all facing down a solid month of bedpan scrubbing. And then…well, there was no other way to say it: Ze had saved their skins.

That story, regardless of its veracity, had been a work of art. If Remus hadn't known that his two best mates had been out marauding after a pair of pants the night before, he might have believed it. She'd even sounded like a properly wronged party. Of course, for all that Remus knew, she was. There was every chance that Sirius and James had plundered her knicker drawer on the hope that she wouldn't mind. But even Remus knew that however they'd come by that pair of underpants, they probably hadn't intended to lose them. And they definitely hadn't been planning on relying on Ze to rescue them from the dangers of certain detention (which was much, much worse than certain death).

The looks on their faces when she'd spewed forth that too-ridiculous-to-be-anything-but-the-truth rant had cemented the fact that they'd been completely surprised. And when Dumbledore had politely questioned them, they'd only been able to stutter out, 'Er, what she said.'

Hardly an unshakeable defence…but with Wythe cowering before Ze's ferocious stare, there had been no one to dispute it.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Well, for Remus at least – now all he had to do was change out his books and be off to Charms. Lily was probably already there, showing him up, but Flitwick didn't hand out detentions very often, and Remus hardly ever deserved one, so…Whistling faintly through his teeth, Remus pushed the dormitory door open and got three steps into the room before he realised that the curtains were drawn over the windows. The circular room was eerily quiet and, standing just in the centre, Remus paused. Behind him the door snicked shut, the noise strangely sinister in the gloom. And then, without any sensible provocation, Remus felt a wave of awareness – of knowing - sweep over his skin. It was a sensation he associated with the primitive, bestial reactions of his wolf form, and it told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was not alone.

There was a faint, calculated rustle from behind him, just beside the door, and he slowly pivoted round, swallowing down the chilly rise of terror as his eyes, rapidly adjusting to the dark, came to rest on the figure sitting in the shadows. Legs, covered to the knees in white socks and ending at the floor with sensible low-heeled shoes, were the only bit of the intruder he could see. But it was enough: the panic roared through his gut and he wondered briefly if praying would help. And then she leant forward and the pale oval of her face swam into view like a ghost emerging from the murk. Remus fought the urge to let out a high-pitched scream.

She was looking at him. Not watching, just looking. And it wasn't the sort of expression that involved bared teeth or narrowed eyes – it was the sort of expression that says the wearer owns lots of black clothing, wears dark glasses at night, and works for a government agency so secret you've never even heard of it. Remus swallowed, wondering if he was about to die. And then Lily smiled.

'Now,' she said, 'would be a good time to start telling me everything you know.'

*.*.*.*.*

'I - - am- - so - - sorry- - ' Sirius wheezed.

Ze whirled round so fast he reeled back, forgetting all about the painful stabbing of the stitch in his side. Her face was as pale as he had ever seen it, but her eyes were fairly glowing. 'You should be,' she snarled. 'You're lucky if I don't feed you your own bloody knackers.'

'Now that's not precisely fair-' James began.

'Fair?' Ze cried. 'Fair? Did one of your teachers just call you a slag? Did someone just wave your underwear round at breakfast - again?'

Sirius and James exchanged an uneasy glance: this was going to be one of those touchy matters, then.

'Well,' James said slowly, 'you did offer them to us-'

'Yeah, after you promised you wouldn't lose them!' She growled, whirling round and pacing three steps before pacing back. The entire time she was muttering a vicious tirade under her breath. 'Bloody idiot – ought to've known I couldn't trust you –'

'Think this might be one of those times where we let her cool down a bit?' James asked out of the corner of his mouth, having sidled up next to Sirius. They were in one of the upper corridors, having sprinted after Ze when they'd finally been released from Dumbledore's office. The headmaster had kept them behind a moment to inform them that they had best watch their arses. Of course, he hadn't said it precisely like that, but the implication had been clear. Sirius had barely heard him, though, his thoughts having followed Ze out the door. Even with the map they'd had a time catching her up – all the shortcuts in the world couldn't help you when they person you were chasing considered fleeing for her life on foot an enjoyable way of taking exercise.

At the moment, however, her physical endurance was looking fair insignificant in comparison to the size of her temper. 'No,' he said slowly to James. 'Er…maybe you ought to go find Lily,' he added. 'See if you can get her sorted – she didn't look too happy.'

James grimaced. 'Yeah – I'll just.' He glanced at Ze, and grimaced again. 'You sure you don't want me to stay – she sounded dead on about that whole,' he gulped, 'feeding us our knackers bit.'

Sirius felt a defensive tightening in his trousers and couldn't stop his own nervous swallow. 'I'll be fine,' he said, a touch faintly.

'-stupid prats – I am so fucked –' Ze was grumbling as she paced a veritable rut in the stone, seeming to have forgotten them completely.

James gave Sirius his best "you're-a-nutter-but-I'll-trust-you-know-what-you' re-about" look, which was more or less an incredulous lift of the brows combined with a quirking of the mouth. Sirius sent him the requisite "don't-you-worry-mate-cos-I've-got-a-plan" reply, deciding that tapping the side of his nose in a knowing manner might be a bit much. Nevertheless, it reassured James, who clapped him on the back and slipped off down the corridor, looking very much like a knight on his way to a conversation with a very large dragon.

Sirius took a deep breath and turned back to Ze, who was now tugging on fistfuls of her hair and muttering an unintelligible stream of –well, Sirius couldn't quite distinguish the words, but they didn't sound very nice. What was more disturbing, however, was that she didn't even seem to know that Sirius was standing just in front of her. 'Er, Ze,' he said quietly, not wanting to startle her. Her only response was to whirl round and kick the wall. Hm. 'Ze?' he said somewhat louder.

'- bloody great bastard -'

Oh-kay. 'Zazzer!' he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and swinging her round to face him. For a moment she stared right through him, her eyes and mind clearly elsewhere. And then she focussed on him, seemed to realise that his hands were wrapped round her arms and that they were nearly nose to nose.

'I'm a right stupid arse.'

'Well,' Sirius said, not quite sure what to say now that he'd got her attention.

'Eruuughg,' she groaned, raising her hands to her face and leaning forward into Sirius. For a moment he froze, his elbows sticking out like ungainly wings as he kept hold of her shoulders. And then, after she'd beat her forehead against his chest a few times, his instincts kicked in and he gathered her up, once again startled by how slight she was. He'd never hugged Ze before, not like this. It was completely different than a casual slinging of an arm around a shoulder, and before he could stop himself he'd tipped his head to the side and was rubbing his cheek over her hair.

'Ssssh,' he murmured soothingly, the gentle gesture at odds with the jerking, furious twitches of her hands against his chest. Beneath his cheek her hair was soft and fine and smelled…warm. Warm and –

'Stop petting me,' she said irritably, pushing away from him. 'I'm not a cat.'

She resumed her pacing – albeit much less furiously – and Sirius stood with his arms hanging oddly. Watching those narrow shoulders hunch tightly he had the urge to step forward and draw her back against him, to tuck his chin over her ear and just hold her.

'-exactly what happened. Are you listening?'

Sirius jerked his mind back to the present and saw that Ze was eyeing him keenly. 'Sorry?' he said. 'What was that last bit?'

She snorted and threw up her hands, mumbling something he couldn't quite catch.

'Eh?' he asked, confused.

'I said you can't even listen,' she snapped.

'Sorry,' he repeated on a sigh. 'Look, why don't we go somewhere we're not likely to get told off for talking?' She shot him a sceptical glance. 'I've got a massive apology to make,' he told her quite honestly, 'and I'd rather not have Filch pop in right as I'm getting to it.'

She sighed heavily and quite a lot of anger seemed to flow out of her, bowing her shoulders further. 'Right – where to then?'

*.*.*

'….and there we were, stuck in the Trophy Room, with Slughorn on one side and that blasted cat on the other and we had to make a run for it, or we would've been caught out…and you know how Slughorn is. We'd've had detention for years, not to mention your – well, anyway. James thought I had them and I thought he had them and we never missed them till we were halfway round the school. By then Wythe was probably tucking them under his pillow and plotting, the great greasy git. But honestly, we never intended for him to get his hands on your –' Sirius swallowed. 'You know…'

'My knickers,' Ze said dryly, drawing her robes closer round her and leaning back on a parapet. They were standing in the open air atop one of the lesser-used towers, Sirius having found his way there with remarkable ease and a distinct lack of hesitation.

'Yes, that would be the one,' he agreed, clearing his throat. 'And I am so sorry, so unbelievable sorry…' It was hard to do this with Ze watching him like that – not like her normal sanguine self, but with that distinctly…female expression. The one that said "oh, you've done it this time and I'm just going to let you chew your own bloody foot off". It was, he thought bitterly, something about the eyes…and the mouth…and the chin…and the…oh sod it – it was the whole bloody face. And it was rather-

'If your mouth stays open much longer something's going to build a nest in it,' Ze said drily over the sound of the wind.

Sirius promptly snapped his mouth closed, his cheeks heating with a blush. 'Look,' he said, not yet ready to meet her eyes. 'I can apologise for the next twenty years and it won't make a bit of difference. We completely fucked up, and we know it. And what's worse…look, we owe you, right? You saved our arses up there and it might seem rather difficult to believe given what happened this morning, but we'd do the same for you – would've done, if we could've thought quick enough,' he added ruefully. He risked a glance up; she was still watching him with that inscrutable expression, and the words choked out of him in raw response. 'We like you Zazzer – we'd never intentionally make you ridiculous, you know that, right? If there was a way we could've stopped it – well, that's nothing to do with it now, but I wanted to strangle Slughorn when he said…that.'

'Yeah?' she asked quietly, and he heard a wrenching undercurrent of bitterness in her voice. 'You think Slughorn's the only one who'll be calling me a tart?' She let out a disillusioned little chuckle. 'The whole school's saying it by now, Sirius, the whole bloody school. And 'tart's' the quaint, old-fashioned version of what the rest are saying.' She shook her head, now wearing a small, twisted smile. 'I guess that'll teach me to be careful what I wish for.'

'Huh?' Sirius asked blankly, not sure when she'd got round to wishing that her knickers would become the currency of underground bets.

She let out another of those bitter little laughs. 'I start whingeing about no one knowing I'm a girl, and two days later I've got everyone in school staring at my pants. Doubt anyone'll be confused now.'

You are a girl, Sirius's mind said immediately. Anyone with sense can see that – it hasn't got anything to do with how short your hair is or the clothes you wear. And it definitely hasn't got anything to do with your underpants – although they're really quite nice – so don't worry. I'll make sure no one's got the nerve to slag you off – and if they do, well…they're buggered. It sounded quite nice in his head – or, at least, it was the truth as he knew it. And then he opened his mouth and what came out was: 'No one knew you'd worn them.'

The gaze she turned on him was incredulous. And then she opened her mouth and began to laugh. Not just a small laugh – not a chuckle or a giggle or a helpless little snort. Gales of laughter. Heaps of it. The deep, belly shaking sort that causes awful abdominal cramps and brings tears to the eyes and puts a person quite in peril of weeing herself if she doesn't reign it in. Oh, well done, Sirius thought with acidic disdain. Now she's laughing at you. Why did this always happen? Why? And, worse, how? How did he always say the wrong thing? And not just the little wrong thing, like "looks pink to me - what's magenta?", but the big wrong thing like- well, like, "no one knew you'd worn them". I mean, anyone can get confused about pink and magenta, but knickers? There probably weren't even a handful of woefully inept wankers who could do that.

Really, Sirius thought ruefully, and I wonder why I'm single.

*.*.*

Ze knew she was probably one step away from forcing Sirius to ring for St Mungo's. In fact, given the I-just-swallowed-a-gobstone expression he was wearing, he was probably hoping the mental ward keepers would be showing up any second now. With a loud snort and a shuddering shake she desperately tried to stop the laughter. Her eyes were streaming, her stomach was aching, and she was fairly certain she'd put her kidneys through their paces, but she managed to stifle it down to a few wayward sniggers punctuated by some very damp coughs.

No one knew you'd worn them.

Just thinking of it – paired with that boyishly serious expression on his face when he'd said it – nearly set her off again. Oh, leave it to a boy to think that that main worry here was whether or not the pants had been worn. Sweet Circe, did he think it mattered? For all the students in the Great Hall knew – and most of them had been quite far away, so they wouldn't – the wad of white cotton hanging from Wythe's hand could have been a bit of cloth with clever holes in, or even a house elf's duster. It just didn't matter, not when everyone had wanted to see knickers. It would probably be a relief to think that people were saying she'd just had a daft moment and decided to loan her pants to friends in need – that she'd quite innocently and non-sexually handed them over. That would be loads better than what people were saying at the moment.

Not, of course, that any of that would occur to Sirius. He might be clever and relatively devious, but he was also rather…empathetic. It had taken her ages to find the proper word to describe that bit of him – until today, in fact. He was as jocular and cocky as any adolescent boy, but there was also something…else. Sirius wanted to understand people. He wanted to discover what made them go. Maybe he was just curious, or maybe he was determined not to hurt the people he cared about – either way, he worked harder at understanding than anyone else Ze knew.

Even now he was sitting there, his mouth drawn down at the corners, leaning against the parapet opposite her. Most blokes wouldn't have been able to utter an apology at all, let alone sit quietly – if unhappily – by while the person they'd just apologised to howled with mirth. By all rights he ought to have stormed off in a strop about the time she started picking at him. But, being Sirius, he hadn't. Oh, she could see that he was uncomfortable, but there was no doubt about the fact that he would stay it out. Part of it was patience, but part of it was also the desire to do what he thought was right. And part of it was loyalty, too. He wanted to understand, and more, he wanted to help.

Even as the thoughts formed in her head, she was startled to realise that, since she was determined to establish herself as a girl, she wanted to be the sort of girl Sirius would respect. Maybe even the sort he would fancy. Not that he would ever fancy her in the specific…more that, in discovering what a guy like Sirius looked for, she could attract someone like him. Someday. Someday far, far down the road. Right. Exactly. She had time. Plenty of time.

But the sly little voice in her head said you have an opportunity right now…

She decided to apply that particular wording to the situation at large, and not the person before her. Carefully she wiped her face with the corner of her sleeve and let the thought stew for a bit. An opportunity… well, yes, she did. A rather large, unforeseen, potentially quite unpleasant one, but an opportunity just the same. And he'd said he owed her a favour…

The idea, now fairly boiling in her head, took shape as she looked Sirius over. He was leaning back against the parapet, the wind messing his hair about, sticking it up in little tufts and licks. With his shirt un-tucked and his tie loosened, his arms crossed over his chest with the sleeves un-cuffed and rolled back, it was easy to see why girls turned to trail longing glances after him. He was the sort of handsome that didn't need qualification or careful consideration to discover. No one would ever look at Sirius and say "well, yeah, his nose is a bit long – but his eyes are gorgeous". All of Sirius's features were gorgeous, from the stormy grey eyes to the silky black hair to the wicked grin that could make even McGonagall blink. That said, Sirius didn't really seem to care. Oh, he knew he was attractive – he'd have had to have grown up in a world without mirrors, luckily reflective mud puddles, and people with eyes in their heads to escape the knowledge – but he didn't exploit it. Despite having the sort of smile that could charm a bank vault open, not to mention a girl's buttons, Sirius was as plagued by the awkward nature of courtship as the next seventeen year old boy.

Which, for the girls of Hogwarts (or, more accurately, their parents and teachers' peace of mind), was probably a very good thing.

And, by virtue of the fact that he didn't view girls solely as bits of scintillating flesh that occasionally spoke, Ze trusted him. Out of all her friends, she respected Sirius's knowledge of female habits the most. Which might not be saying much…but, well, you took what you could get. And really, if she didn't take the chance now, she'd probably just sink back into asexual anonymity when the next scandal came along. The anonymity didn't bother her overmuch, but she didn't fancy being mistaken for a man for the rest of her life….

'I'm not sure I like that look.'

'Hm?' Ze asked idly, not quite sure what he'd just said.

'I said I'm not sure I like that look – it's dangerous,' Sirius repeated, smiling because he was just glad she wasn't laughing at him anymore. 'You plotting revenge?'

Ze's head snapped up, something simmering dangerously in her eyes as she flashed a smile that felt like a lightning strike somewhere low in his belly. And Sirius knew he was in trouble. 'So you owe me a favour, eh?'

Sirius swallowed. Definitely trouble. 'Er…um….yes?'

The grin deepened, approaching lethal levels of gleaming, deadly heat. 'Brilliant. I'd like you to help me with something.'

He licked suddenly dry lips. This sounded simple – overly, deceptively, perilously simple. And that searing flash of teeth was eating its way through his brain… Big trouble. 'Help? I suppose I could do that. Er, with what?'

Around him the world began to melt and run until there was nothing but Ze and that supernova smile. 'You're going to teach me how to be a girl.'

A/N - and so it begins... dear old Ze's beginning to see Sirius in a different light...but is she right? or is she idealising... and poor Sirius - he just wants somebody to love he just needs somebody to looooove. sorry, musical moment.

thanks to all who reviewed (i cannot believe how many there are!) i appreciate your thoughts! as i don't have time to reply to each and every one at the moment, i am postponing my responses until i can attend to everyone's at once... sound fair? *author winces, because she knows this is a crap idea...*

at any rate, i shall adore you forever if you leave another (or a first, or a second...)


	15. A Bit Off the Bottom

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

half time: the quarter hour between halves – ostensibly a chance for the players to have a rest, but also a period during which strategy is examined and tactics reassessed. the decisions made during a half time often influence the way the remainder of the match plays out.

Chapter 15: A Bit Off the Bottom

'WHAT?!'

Ze squashed her grin down to a faintly smug smirk and repeated, 'You're going to teach me how to be a girl.'

Sirius's mouth fluttered open and closed with a series of wet little popping noises. He couldn't seem to quite find words to replace them with – in fact, he couldn't seem to bend his brain round the concept of girl at the moment. She wanted him to – she wanted him to – she wanted him to do – 'Wh-wh-what?' he sputtered again.

Ze rolled her eyes. 'It's a lucky thing you're good-looking.'

'Wh-what?'

Ze sighed. For someone so remarkably clever, he seemed to be having a few issues with this. And really, it wasn't that complicated a plan – he, Sirius Black, relatively sensible creature versed in the feminine arts (well, sort of ), was going to help her, Ze Meridian, gender profiling malcontent, change her life. Well, maybe changing her life was a bit much, but she'd definitely need a new haircut. 'This is too good a chance to pass up,' she explained – slowly, just so he wouldn't get confused.

'What chance?' he asked, utterly bewildered. But they were words - at least he wasn't mouthing like a partially asphyxiated trout anymore.

'This one,' Ze repeated, getting a bit exasperated. Honestly, wasn't he following? When he just stared at her blankly she huffed out a breath and attempted to stimulate that rare and surly beast: male intuition. 'Look, right at this moment, what do you think any given kid in this castle is talking about?'

'Your pants,' Sirius replied promptly, glad to know the answer to something.

'Right in one,' she said, like the host of some demented television game. 'My pants. Pants that, indisputably, prove I'm a girl, right?'

'Well…yes.'

'And everyone's seen them, yeah?' she prompted.

Sirius wondered if this was her idea of a joke. 'Um, well, yes, well, as I've already apologised –'

She flapped a hand. 'Oh, I'm not angry – well, I am, furious, actually, but don't worry about that now – look, my point is, every single person in this school is presently thinking about Ze Meridian, that totty Gryffindor girl.'

'Yes,' Sirius said hesitantly, in case this hypothesis was incorrect, 'but didn't you just say that was, er, a bad thing?'

'Definitely a bad thing,' she agreed cheerfully. 'Horrible, actually, considering I don't much like being the centre of attention. But,' she said, and it was one of those horribly dramatic, unbearably portentous, what-I'm-about-to-say-makes-everything-else-superf luous 'buts' that set your teeth on edge and cause your intestines to knot because whatever follows is going to be awful. 'But people are looking.'

Sirius had been geared up for a Statement – one of those truly inspirational (or at least well-parsed and ingeniously soundtracked) speeches that leave you in no doubt that the speaker is absolutely right and you should agree, even if you haven't got a bloody clue about what you're agreeing to. The fact that people were looking, italics aside, didn't quite pack the requisite punch. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Not following.'

'Why do you think no one notices I'm a girl?' she asked, and suddenly the gleaming smile and speculative glitter were gone, and she was Ze – bonelessly relaxed and terrifyingly intense in the same breath. And she was staring at him with those eyes and he had no idea what to say.

So he licked his lips and tried an all-purpose, 'Er, dunno?'

'It's because they don't look at me,' she explained.

Sirius wasn't sure if situations like this had a metaphysical side, but he was beginning to think they were approaching it. The urge to scratch his head in confusion was almost overwhelming. 'Then how-'

'Oh, they see me, they see that there's someone there, but they don't actually look.' Sirius felt his lips purse: if she didn't keep talking he was in trouble, because he didn't know what question to ask that could possibly get him an explanation. Thankfully, she kept going. 'When you see a load of skinny figures with short hair and broomsticks, what do you think of? Quidditch side, right?' she asked, sparing him the need to reply. 'And when you think quidditch side, you think 'load of sweaty blokes', right? And then, when you see one or maybe two of those quidditch players off somewhere else, you don't even notice them really, because you already know that they're skinny with short hair and broomsticks – you already know what they're like so you don't have to look. And that's the problem. That's always been the problem. People know I'm here – they pass me every day, they see me in the corridors, they have classes with me. But even if they sit right down beside me, they don't notice I'm a girl, cos they've already stuffed me off in some mental corner where girls can't go. I'm just part of the scenery, and in essentials, scenery can't change. A tree is a tree, whether its summer or winter, with leaves or without, it's still a tree!'

Sirius rather thought he understood. At least, he had until she'd got to the tree bit. That was just dodgy. But the rest of it, well…yeah, she had a bit of a point. 'So,' he said, feeling his way along, 'if everyone's finally having to look at you…'

'Then I'm going to show them what I want them to see,' she finished, beaming at him proudly, like he was a toddler who'd finally mastered the use of a proper potty.

And honestly, aside from being gobsmacked, Sirius was impressed. It was brilliant. Ingenious. Not to mention devious. The word misdirection applied perfectly. Except… 'You're not going to really change, are you?' he asked, suddenly quite worried. 'I mean, you'll still be – well, you, yeah?'

She rolled her eyes. 'Of course I'll be me – s'not like I can go changing myself out at this point. What would I do, take out an advert in the Daily Prophet– "personality, slightly used, just seventeen and v. well cared for"?'

He smiled. 'No, guess not. Long as you aren't, you know, going to start wearing dresses and gobs of jewellery and everything in pink.'

'Can't stand pink – never have,' she replied breezily. 'And I already wear a skirt every day, so there's no change there, and jewellery would just get in the way…' Her voice had grown progressively less assured with each statement, and she was now chewing on her lip. 'Er…what can I do?'

Sirius felt a pang somewhere rather uncomfortable and before he knew it, he was speaking. 'Ze, you don't have to change anything,' he said earnestly. 'You're brilliant already. It doesn't matter what clothes you wear, or what your hair looks like, or who your friends are – you're you. You're a girl. No one can take that away from you, or make you any less just because you aren't the usual sort. And you shouldn't worry, because you're perfect just the way you are.'

For a long moment she stared at him, and then said, 'That's a lovely sentiment Sirius. Pity it's not the way things work.' Her voice was very dry, and for a moment Sirius was honestly stung: he'd been telling the truth. She seemed to realise that she'd pricked him, because she hastened to add, 'I'm not perfect,' in a much less scathing tone. 'No one is. But I appreciate you saying that, and I wish other people were clever enough to see things that way. It would make life loads easier, wouldn't it?'

Sirius had to squelch the desire to hug her again. 'Yeah,' he agreed. 'It would.'

She nodded silently, and dug her toe into the stone. For a long moment they just stood, the wind whistling round them, not saying anything at all. And, watching as she chewed her lower lip until it was full and red and puffy, Sirius discovered that he'd never really looked at Ze himself. Don't be daft, he thought, but even as he was trying to convince himself he knew exactly what Zazzer looked like, he was discovering he was wrong. Oh, sure, he knew she had the proper number of arms and legs, and that her eyes and nose and all were more or less in the right places. But when had he ever noticed her mouth? Specifically how…soft it was? And how the upper lip curved so perfectly into the lower, making a tiny pout that was somehow sultry and sweet in the same moment. And how had he never noticed that, despite the fact her skirt hung right down to her knees and her jumper bagged shapelessly round her waist, she had legs that could wrap around him twice? Easily twice he amended as his eyes travelled up the length of her, not bothering to take her skirt into account.

'Right,' she suddenly said, her head coming up. Sirius, who had been chewing on his own lip, yelped as he bit down – hard – at the sound of her voice. 'We need to get this sorted – what do I do first?'

Sirius, who was trying to separate his thoughts into two groups – bloody hell that hurts and legs… - was taken completely off guard. 'Huh?'

'Girl, you daftie – think girl.'

Sirius swallowed. That train of thought was not doing him any good at the moment. He was a seventeen year old guy – thinking girl at any point lead down a rather libidinous path. And at the present moment just the mention of it had bits of him humming – humming rather insistently. 'Girl,' he said slowly, rolling the word out as his brain played all sorts of tricks on him.

For her part, Ze wasn't paying him the least attention. She was leant back on the parapet, deep in thought as the wind flirted with her hair and – much to Sirius's dismay – the hem of her skirt. 'Well, since I am a girl, making me look like one can't be that difficult,' she muttered, and Sirius nodded in absent agreement, watching as the wind flicked the grey wool up over her knees, billowing it out and up… 'Ha!' Ze cried in exaltation, and Sirius actually jumped.

'What?' he asked, and then, determined to show he wasn't just some perv, in deeply sardonic tones he added, 'You had an epiphany about the empowering nature of stockings?'

'What? Stockings? No,' she waved off. 'I…hmm…alright, lets do this logically,' she finally said, and Sirius nodded. Logic was good. Logic was familiar. Logic had nothing to do with fantasies. 'We probably ought to start with the differences – you know, how I'm not like the others. And its got to be external things…like…clothes. Clothes are easy, yeah? I mean, they just go on and come off, right? Take off the wrong ones, put on the right ones and, wham, I'm a girl.'

This was too much for Sirius's over-stimulated brain to process. That taking off of clothes, the putting on of clothes…the putting on the right clothes and taking off the wrong clothes and the wrong clothes on and right clothes off – clothes off - 'Just stop!' he shouted.

Ze, who had apparently kept on talking, stopped full stop and stared at him with both brows arched. 'Er…you alright?'

'Just – just –' Sirius licked dry lips and held out his hand, silently asking for a minute. Once he'd got the images out of his head, he nodded, trusting himself to form words again. And then he opened his mouth.

And nothing.

He closed it, deciding to start over again, and opened it once more. Still nothing.

'Well?' Ze asked.

'Well just – wait - just a bloody minute,' he snapped, annoyed with himself. This isn't complex arithmancy mate, just spit it out. 'I have no idea what you want me to do,' he finally said. 'I mean, you're talking about taking clothes off and putting clothes on and how to make yourself a girl and – okay, look. Frankly, I have no idea how to go about any of that, except maybe the taking clothes off bit, and that's mostly just because – well, never mind.' Ze was still watching with that expression that said "and any minute, it'll balance the ball on its nose, and that man there will give it a fish".

And somehow, that got the words out. 'I don't know how to help you…be a girl,' Sirius said desperately. 'I just…I don't know.'

Ze pursed her lips. 'Actually-'

'Actually has nothing to do with it!' he shouted, and in the back of his mind he knew that he was taking this completely out of proportion. After all, she hadn't asked him put on a dress. But that didn't stop the irrational panic welling up at the idea of helping to pick out lipsticks. 'I know nothing about being a girl! Nothing!'

Ze sighed and gave him a long, patient stare. And then, while his chest heaved and he watched her fretfully, she sighed again and crossed the floor to come and lean against the wall beside him. Not looking at him, but staring up into the sky and squinting a bit at a far-flying bird, she began to speak. 'I know you don't know anything about being a girl. That's not why I asked. If I wanted to turn out like every bleach-soaked, tarted up slag in our year, I'd have just copied them. I'm not stupid you know – even I can puzzle out how to put on mascara.' And now she was looking at him, and her mouth was just as soft and wide up close as it had been from a distance. 'I want you to help me because I trust you – you'll be honest and I like your…er, tastes.' She cleared her throat any looked away after she said that, and in an odd way, Sirius felt flattered. 'If I've got you measuring after me, it won't get out of hand,' she added. 'That, and I'm going to need someone who's actually spent a bit of quality time with a girl, and you're the only person I know that qualifies.'

She wants you to help her turn into a girl because you're the least pervy of the lot, and you've had a serious girl friend, the obedient bit of his brain surmised. And that doesn't seem just a bit FUNNY? the rogue – and far cleverer – bit shouted back disbelievingly. 'So,' Sirius said aloud. 'You want me to, what? Give you lessons? Tell you when you're doing something right, and something wrong? To- to help?'

Ze beamed at him. 'Yeah,' she said brightly. And then, just when he was letting out the breath he'd been holding, she started talking again, and this time the words weren't coming so fluently. 'I know it's a lot to ask, but I – well, I'm going to need a bit of help. I just, well, uh, I want to be me but…a girl, you know?'

Sirius, whose own stomach was settling in the face of Ze's obvious lack of assurance, found himself nodding as though he completely understood. 'Yeah, 'course.'

'I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not unhappy with the way I am now, its just that I don't like the way…it makes people think of me. So, so I'm going to have to change it – me – whatever. And fast – I've got to do it fast. So if you don't mind – that is, I'd really appreciate if you could, um, help point me in the right direction because…well, because I trust you.'

Sirius stared back, bewildered. 'Because you trust me?'

His shock seemed to shore her back up. 'Well, that…and you owe me a favour the size of the Sahara, so how about paying up like I ask, and not telling no-one?'

The smile she flashed would have done a Liverpool bookies proud, and Sirius found himself eyeing it appreciatively himself. And then he snapped his head about, remembering that she wanted him to be her – was there a word for this? Could he say "tutor?" Doesn't matter what you call it he told himself idly. You're still fucked but proper – and you're still going to do it, you stupid sod. And not just because she's saved your arse – you're going to do it because- And that's quite enough of that thought, he told himself desperately. 'Okay,' he jittered, running a hand through his hair. 'Okay yeah, I'll do it. Whatever…whatever you need.'

'Lovely,' she said briskly, deciding now was not the time to give him room to reconsider. 'So, we haven't got all the time in the world – what's the quickest thing to change?'

Sirius, not quite sure that the situation had registered, heard his throat clearing. 'Er….' Think – anything – anything at all His eyes flashed over the figure beside him and, perhaps because desperation makes even the kindest man critical, caught on the state of her clothes. With a shrewd assessment of quality and style that would have done Grace proud he recognised – quite for the first time – how unusual they were. Unlike the rest of the school, who had discovered and (much to the male population's delight) lovingly embraced the micro-miniskirt, Ze seemed to believe that the word "skirt" was synonymous with "potato sack" Likewise, her shirt and jumper were a size or twelve too large, the tails hanging down well over the waist of her skirt, which in turn hung well down her legs. And this meant the skirt was long indeed, as her legs were really quite endless… he snapped his mind back with effort and licked suddenly dry lips. 'Er…I don't quite know how to say this, but…well, your clothes are a bit…big.'

Ze pinched a fold of fabric between two fingers and pulled it more than a hand-span from her body. 'Huh,' she said, as though this were a phenomenon that had occurred overnight, a cruel and impish trick on the part of her wardrobe. 'So?'

'Well, it's just, er, most girls wear things that are a bit…tighter,' he explained.

Ze scratched her head. 'Heh…you think a shrinking charm would do it?'

'Yeah,' he said, crossing his fingers. 'That's good.'

She glanced up from taking inventory of her school kit, and eyed him shrewdly. For a moment she seemed about to say something, and then she closed her mouth, glowered at her hemline, and glanced back up with a purposefully light smile. 'Might take awhile – I'm afraid everything I've got is a bit…oversized. How about I fettle round with what's in my wardrobe, and you can tell me when I've got it close to right?'

Sirius, who had been holding his breath in fear of a full-on fashion show complete with disco soundtrack and flashing lights, let out a long and relieved sigh. 'Sounds brilliant.'

She tilted her head to the side and the smile took on a faintly mischievous edge. 'Right. I think I might be having a headache about the time we're passing hospital,' she said after a moment.

Oh, that's clever. Sirius felt his lips curving into an answering smile and fought to temper them down, keeping his expression sombre and his tone exhausted. 'Sorry to hear it. Me, I'm feeling a bit on the peaky side – might be sick.'

'Yeah?' She moved toward the stairs and he followed. 'That's miserable. Maybe I'll let you have the nurse first – wouldn't want to catch anything, being in there at the same time.'

'Good idea,' he agreed as they twined their way down through the darkness. 'I'll only be about ten minutes. After I probably won't be up for classes – I'll have to have a lie down in the common room.'

'Funny,' she said. 'I was thinking the same thing.'

*.*.*.*

Sirius had forgotten about Lily.

He couldn't understand how he'd been so stupid. It was never, he had discovered many years before, a good idea to forget about Lily, because she was the sort of person that had a nasty habit of springing surprises on you. Sirius knew that somewhere in the world there were nice surprises…it was just that none of them ever put themselves at Lily's disposal. A Lily surprise usually hurt. On in the least, it was humiliating. Today's, surprise surprise, was both.

'We didn't know!' he shouted for the fourth time, trying desperately not to panic. Of course, not panicking when someone is dangling you over the edge of a rather high stairwell is a tricky thing. 'I swear we didn't know!'

'Why did you steal them then?' the redhead snarled, her voice full of righteous wrath.

'We didn't!' he said, barely managing to modulate his voice into almost normal tones, which he desperately hoped would have a calming effect. 'Look, really, we didn't.'

'Oh bollocks –'

'He's telling the truth!' Remus cried. But his voice was muffled by the sock Lily had shoved into his mouth just before she'd tied him to the chair. She was an old hand at this – after all, she'd been dealing with the Marauders for six years now. After interrogating Remus at length, she had decided he really didn't know anything, which meant she'd just lain in wait for Sirius, who'd thoughtlessly headed for his dormitory the moment he'd returned to the common room from visiting the matron. He'd been so busy thinking of ways to ease Ze out of her nerves that he hadn't even noticed something was amiss with the lighting in his dormitory. And that was how he had ended up suspended (upside down, to add insult to injury) over the side of the boys' staircase in Gryffindor tower while Remus stared from a chair just inside the door to the seventh's, gagged and bound so he couldn't issue a warning. Lily was nobody's fool.

'Don't interrupt, Lupin,' she snapped. 'You're lucky they didn't tell you anything – it could be you hanging here, yeah?'

Remus tried to say something else, but the sock swallowed the words.

'Lily,' Sirius said in the steadiest voice he could manage. 'We didn't take those pants – I swear it.'

'Oh please,' Lily said, sounding elegantly derisive, a tone Sirius never could manage. 'Like I'd believe that – you had to have stolen them! No girl in her right mind would just give them to you!'

Sirius closed his eyes in defeat, ready to lie his bollocks off, when the voice of a vanquishing angel said, 'Actually, I did.'

One of those pauses, the overly theatrical sort where everyone freezes, then turns to gape at the speaker, happened. Remus couldn't really join in the gaping, as there was a stone wall in the way, but Lily and Sirius managed to do the situation creditable justice.

Ze stood just inside the portrait hole, her hands shoved casually into the pockets of her robes, watching the scene with a bemusedly nonchalant expression.

'What?' Lily said.

'My pants – I really did give them to James and Sirius,' Ze repeated, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

'Oh,' Lily said. And then she blinked. 'Oh.'

Sirius felt ready to faint from hanging upside down for so long, but he wasn't about to interrupt Lily when she was Thinking – he'd be lucky to land on something only mildly breakable. And then Ze said, 'could you let him down now?'

'What?' Lily mumbled, dazed, and Sirius braced himself for the crash. But Lily just said 'Oh…yeah…'

And Sirius was slowly lowered to the floor. 'Thanks,' he said as he scrambled to his feet, wavering a bit as his circulation evened out.

'No problem,' Ze replied, her eyes still on Lily.

Sirius turned to follow her gaze and was surprised to see that Lily was…blushing. Blushing and looking, well, a wee bit angry. 'You just gave them your knickers?' she asked Ze, her voice oddly high. 'Both of them?'

It took a moment for the implications to sink in, and then Sirius snapped to. 'It wasn't like that -' he began, determined to defend Ze's honour somehow.

'I'm not shagging them,' Ze said patiently. 'Together or separately. They needed the pants and I thought it would be better for them to know that I knew they had mine than to let them steal a pair of someone else's who wouldn't know.'

That's a lot of knowing Sirius thought bemusedly. But he had the brains not to show any sort of amusement at this oh-so-crucial moment. Instead he pasted on an expression of inviolable honesty and said, 'We never told Wythe they were yours or anyone else's,' he added, looking Lily in the eye. 'That was all his bit. Wanting to embarrass you and James both, I imagine.'

Lily nodded, her cheeks still faintly pink. 'Right well, um…sorry…about…the…'

Remus jostled in his chair and made emphatic noises of distress.

Being a compassionate soul (deep down somewhere, Ze began to think), Lily jolted out of her embarrassment. 'Oh, sorry Rem,' she said, turning quickly, her wand whipping round to free him from the bonds.

Sirius turned to Ze, opening his mouth to say, again, that he owed her a favour. But the words never got out. The portrait flew open and James, panting and dishevelled, burst through. 'Lily!' he cried. 'I can explain!'

Sirius and Ze exchanged a glance, both grimacing as they recognised the signs of a Great Battle brewing. 'I'll just be upstairs then,' she said.

Sirius heaved a sigh. 'Right.'

*.*.*.*.*

'Ten sickles says he snogs her again - and she punches him for it.'

'Mmm…possible, but unlikely,' Remus replied after a moment's thought. 'Even James won't have forgotten our little bet this quickly.'

'Moony, this is James…and Lily. And she's already called him a fuckwit. Twice.'

Remus eyed Sirius, and then sighed. 'Fine – five sickles he tries and misses her face, but she still punches him.'

'Done.'

Once they'd sealed the bet with the requisite handshake, Sirius settled himself onto the window ledge and Remus went back to rubbing feeling into his wrists. The two had – very wisely – shut themselves in their dormitory to avoid both the insults and the projectiles, which were being hurled with equal violence. This tactic allowed them to capture all the details of the battle raging below without taking any blows about the head. At the moment Lily was accusing James of being a liar, a thief, and an enthusiastic participant in various sorts of bestial armour. The list of insults was long and distinguished, her pace unflinching and her delivery flawless. Sirius was even mildly impressed by some of the adjectives – after all, it wasn't every day you heard "unconscionable" modifying "sheep shagger".

'And people think she's such a dear,' he sighed, shaking his head.

Remus listened for a moment more, his brows arching in appreciation, and then asked: 'D'you think that's anatomically possible?'

'No,' Sirius replied after a moment's consideration. 'But that is,' he grinned as James's rebuttal echoed through the tower.

'What he lacks in originality he makes up for in force,' Remus agreed.

'Sometimes the old standbys are the best,' Sirius shrugged. 'And there's no doubt he means it – he's been after her for years.'

'Still, if you're trying to get up a girl's skirt, shouting "fuck you" is hardly the way to go about it,' Remus pointed out with his usual good sense.

'True,' Sirius agreed with half a smile. 'He should at least buy her flowers first.'

They sniggered for a few moments, listening as Lily and James began a duet, soprano and baritone, of highly inflammatory accusations and suggestions. Sirius even caught himself humming a bit of opera music that seemed to fit the scene. And then he winced as Lily arrived at the height of her aria, the piercing notes reaching crescendo at the words "And you call yourselves her friends!"

The words seemed to soar through the tower, pure and piercing, and Sirius's face contorted in a wince so profound it was nearly a caricature of anguish. And the worst of it was, he couldn't be sure if he was feeling more guilt for slagging Ze off in front of the school, or hysterical fear at the thought of teaching her to "be a girl". The reaction wasn't lost on Remus; he'd been looking for a way to bring up the subject of Ze's knickers without making a joke, and decided that this was as close as he would get. 'You wouldn't feel like explaining, would you?' he asked, ignoring the sound of something shattering against a wall below them.

What, thought Sirius, do I say to that? "It's long, and complicated, and yes they were her pants – but don't worry, I'm going to help her shorten her skirts and then everyone will realise she's a girl, so all's well in the end"? Yeah, 'cos that doesn't sound like I'm taking the piss at all. He shook his head ruefully, a gesture Remus observed and analysed, tucking away for later thought. And the young werewolf, for whom patience wasn't so much a virtue as a virtuosity, waited it out. Sirius's mouth turned down at the corners – a sure sign that he was debating how much to share, and how to share it – and then, a few moments later, he heaved a sigh. And Remus knew that he was about to hear the story – or at least part of it.

'Right,' Sirius began, 'So last night we went out looking for knickers…'

*.*.*.*

'I've got you now, you little – ooofghgh.'

Ze's breath was knocked completely out of her lungs as she collided with the corner of Serena's trunk. What had started as a flying tackle to overtake a curiously animated shirt was ending as a heap of mutated clothing and wobbling limbs as she bounced off the trunk and skidded painfully across the floor. Once she was positive she was no longer moving, Ze shook herself and sat up, her eyes darting around the room, searching for a flash of white. It was a more or less futile exercise, since all of her school shirts were white, and most of them were – in various different sizes and shapes – scattered across the room.

Serena was right: fashion was a battlefield.

And yet Ze, whose grasp of clothing sizes involved only two measurements (what fit, and what didn't), did know that she was overdoing this a bit. After all, she'd managed to ruin almost everything she owned, and for what? Because, upon arriving before her wardrobe and confronted her enormous clothes, she'd still been stinging a bit from Sirius's apparent disbelief that she could make this work? Or, more specifically, from his obvious desire to have nothing to do with the process? I practically had to beg him to help, she thought with a groan at the less-than-encouraging admission. In the end, of course, she'd played on his loyalty and gotten him to agree by reminding him that she'd recently done him a large favour – not exactly true friendly behaviour. But in all honesty, there wasn't anyone else to turn to. Jacko was miles away, Clive was utterly clueless, and…well, the only other options were Serena and…Dorcas. Better she thought firmly, to have Sirius – even if he would rather be snogging Rob than helping me with…this And oh, what "this" had become. When Sirius had mentioned making her clothes tighter it had seemed so – so reasonable. And simple. A good place to start, an easy first step, as it were.

'Easy, my arse,' Ze mumbled as she stood, massaging her aching side. So far the score was Wardrobe: 11, Zazzer: 0. Shrinking Charms were simple – they'd covered them back in third year – and Ze had always considered herself passably good at Charms. But she was beginning to suspect that she was doing something wrong. Perhaps it was the fact that half of her skirts were now roughly the size and shape of postage stamps. Or maybe it was the little pattering rain of buttons that fell whenever she tried to doctor one of her school blouses. Oh yes, her things were changing shape (some of them were even getting smaller), but she got the feeling that something was missing.

Like, oh, the sleeves.

Ze had assumed that tailoring clothes would involve just your basic set of spells, administered sensitively and with precision. It couldn't really be dangerous, could it? After all, no one had ever lost an arm in Madame Malkins, had they? Of course, that wouldn't be the sort of thing Madame Malkin would want getting, round, would it… Ze shook herself and forced her gaze – and her attention – back to the room. The shirt was out there, somewhere. In a vague, nebulous way, Ze knew that she ought to be worried. It seemed that clothes had been doing very strange things in Gryffindor Tower lately – just last night a pair of socks had torn the common room to shreds, if the rumours were to be believed. And now one of her shirts (well, it was still more or less a shirt, she supposed) was creeping round the place on sleeves and tails in an awkward imitation of a slinking jungle beast.

It had got a bit…tetchy when she'd tried to get both of its sleeves the same length, and had tried to hide under Serena's bed. But, being of the school that things under the bed don't really exist, Serena had packed the space with shoeboxes and the several large trunks she needed to cart around her massive wardrobe. The shirt had found it tough going, and been forced to make a dash for another bed. Ze, never having been one to hang back, had made a dive after it. And now she had a skint knee and the shirt was…somewhere.

Muttering a curse Ze kicked at a ball of charcoal flannel that still looked vaguely skirt-like and, deciding that she couldn't really make the situation worse, shot a repairing spell at it. For a moment nothing happened. 'Oh bugger th-' Ze stopped mid-snarl as the skirt shot up into the air, twirled round twice and then, as though to say "I've had enough of this shite", exploded in a puff of grey fuzz. 'Of all the stupid-'

'Ahem.'

'Ahhh!' Ze jumped right out of her skin (or came as close to it as she ever wanted to) and whirled round to see Lily Evans standing in the doorway, wearing the sort of expression you expect to find on a nun during a nudie show.

'Er, is, um, everything…alright?' Lily asked hesitantly, grimacing a little as her gaze swept across the room and landed on a pile of what had once been perfectly serviceable jumpers. Ze felt the skin under her collar heat as a blush prepared to sweep its fiery way up her throat and across her face. Of all the people to walk in and see this, of course it would have to be Lily "I'm a Bloody Charms Prodigy" Evans. But Lily seemed to get the hint that Ze wasn't up for a dissection of her technique, and instead of commenting, she just smiled faintly – nervously? – at Ze. 'I wanted to, er, talk with you a bit.'

If possible, this was a less reassuring conversation opener than "you should have swished, not flicked". Whenever Lily said "I want to talk with you" she was usually speaking to James, and somehow "talking" involved quite a lot of yelling and Lily grabbing James by the ear and shaking him. Ze's hands had reflexively clapped over her own ears before Lily's mouth had finished forming the words. 'Talk?' she asked in a voice a good bit higher than usual. 'Talk about what?'

If Lily realised the distress she was causing, she didn't show it. Rather, her expression wavered back and forth between resolution and complete confusion. And at that point Ze realised that the remains of the skirt she was standing on were twitching rather violently under her foot. 'Uh,' Lily said, her eyes drawn out of horror and fascination to the fabric, which was now attempting to jerk out from beneath Ze's shoe. 'Are you, um, having a nice…day?'

'Oh, yeah, brilliant,' Ze replied, hoping she didn't sound too bitter.

'Right, well, it just looks like…er, is that shirt supposed to only have one sleeve? Because I'm fairly su-'

Whether out of humiliation, or simply because she didn't feel like explaining, Ze didn't know, but she found herself interrupting in the rudest of ways. 'Was there something you wanted?'

Lily, her lips pursing slightly, brought her gaze back to Ze, and seemed to draw herself up. Oh, brilliant Ze told herself now you've encouraged her to talk. 'I, well, I wanted to say thank you,' Lily began in tones thick with gratitude and sincerity. 'What you did this morning was truly selfless…'

Yeah, right, completely selfless, not wanting my knickers in teacher custody, Ze thought darkly.

'…I'll never be able to repay you, really, because that sort of thing is just…above and beyond, you know?'

Ze nodded, but had no idea what to say. Not that Lily seemed to need a response – she was going along just fine, detailing how kind and good it had been of Ze to stand up to Wythe, the horrid, socially inept oppressor of female rights. Is being good a lying a talent, or a curse? Ze briefly wondered, thinking back on her explosively inspired tirade in the headmaster's office.

'I know they say that telling the truth is always the best thing, but that doesn't always mean it's the easiest…'

Drawn back to reality by this frankly asinine observation, Ze eyed Lily critically. Did she really believe she needed to come up here and sound, well, together? Polite? Mature? Didn't she realise that Ze – hell, the entire school - had just heard her shrieking at Potter like an operatic banshee? Luckily, Ze was saved from further consideration of the point by a flash of white, just in the corner of her eye.

The shirt.

'…realise Potter and Black probably didn't offer much choice in the matter…'

Lily might as well have been singing Merlin Save the Minister for all the attention Ze was paying her. The shirt, which had apparently sought refuge behind Grace's overlarge trunk, was slinking slowly up behind Lily and, despite the fact that it had neither eye sockets nor eyeballs, seemed to be watching the redhead in a most predatory manner. Ze, nodding in what she hoped was a convincing manner, began to edge a bit to Lily's left.

'…can't imagine how you must have felt, completely victimised by your so-called friends, and yet steadfast in not allowing anyone else to take advantage…'

'Mmm, exactly,' Ze mumbled, nodding inattentively as she crept two steps closer to the shirt, which now looked to be crouching in preparation for a pounce.

'…speak with Professor McGonagall immediately about seeing that you're treated properly and fairly - what the bloody hell are you doing?'

And that Ze thought is more like the Lily James wants to know and loves. Of course, thinking this was more or less superfluous, as she was currently rolling round on the floor, trying to pin the – surprisingly solid – shirt to the ground. 'Just-' she puffed, putting all her weight to the task. 'Doing-' she shoved an arm through the collar and down the middle of the blouse. 'The-' huff!, '- laundry!' she puffed, rolling onto her knees and elbows, the shirt squirming but pinned, all four corners anchored to the stone by a knee or elbow. Ze looked up at Lily, blew her fringe out of her eyes, and tried a smile. 'You know how I like to keep things tidy.'

Lily stared down at her, eyes narrowed but mouth open wide, her gaze flashing from the slowly settling shirt to Ze's strained face. For a long moment Ze was afraid that the head girl was about to give her a proper telling off. And then, whether because she saw the over-bright, desperate gleam in Ze's eyes that said she needed to be alone and doing something productive, or because she simply had no impetus for dealing with the situation, Lily nodded. 'Right,' she said, her righteous tirade completely forgotten. 'I'll just leave you to it then.'

And she turned on her heel and moved toward the door with the slow and quiet grace that seemed innate and natural and so very different from her authoritative Head Girl stride. On the threshold she paused and then said, over her shoulder in the most nonchalant of voices, 'If you're trying to refit things, you might try Sartoris Perfectus - it works wonders.' And then she executed a jaunty little flick with her hand, and smiled.

'Thanks,' Ze said, but Lily was already gone, and the word drifted out to empty air and the sound of footsteps on stone. Ze glanced down at the white shirt that was now lying innocuously on the floor beneath her, and slowly eased her weight off it, prepared for an attack. But none came. Sartoris Perfectus? 'Well then,' she said to the empty room. 'Let's give it a whirl.'

*.*.*

Several hours and many expletives later, Ze was standing before her mirror, staring at a reflection she only half recognised. 'I've got an ass,' she breathed as she turned sideways and stared. It wasn't much of one, granted, but it was there. And all because she'd taken the trousers in with Lily's handy little spell. Not just the trousers – her entire wardrobe, even the school kits she thought she'd ruined were mostly back to normal. There had been one skirt and a top beyond repair, but she'd decided the house elves could save them for dusters if they liked.

The rest of her clothes were piled haphazardly on her bed, and she was having a go at trying them on. The results were, even to her untutored eye, radical. She wasn't sure anyone else would notice, at least not right off, but now that all those layers of cloth were the proper size the shape that was visible was not entirely unpleasing. Oh, she was still straight and narrow as a pole, but there were faint curves more or less near the appropriate places, and with her t-shirts shrunk down to a size that allowed them to hug her waist a bit, she could almost pass for fashionable. She smiled at the girl – still a bit shaggy and unkempt, but definitely a girl – in the mirror, and twirled lightly on her toes. There was a part of her that wanted to stay upstairs and try things on to make sure they all made her look so…curvy, but she also knew that if she was going to make this whole situation work – namely, looking like a girl while people were still looking at her – she needed to get the process finished as quickly as possible. Which meant she needed to ask Sirius's opinion on a few things. Like how to not walk as though, well, as though she'd been riding on a broomstick for too long. And probably – she was going out on a limb here- she should stop belching so often.

See, she told herself as she turned and headed for the door, already thinking like a girl. Next thing you know, you'll be prancing round in one of those – what do they call them – But what they called them she never did remember. Because, as she passed Serena's bed, she spotted something that made her stop dead, and slowly turn her head back to look again.

There, on the table by Serena's bed, was a book. Since Serena never read anything more taxing than her horoscope in the papers, this was in itself an occurrence worthy of a second glance. But the book itself wasn't what had Ze pausing – it was the title. Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: the Modern Witch's Guide to Do-It-Yourself Hair Maintenance!

No, surely not…that's too much coincidence… she thought, hesitantly flipping the book open with a shaky hand. Except it definitely, surely was, because there, in the index, was an entire section on "Trim on a Whim!" And just below that was saucy line "the clever witch's quick guide to keeping her style top-notch". Unable to help herself, Ze thumbed through to the appropriate page, and gave it a quick scan.

"Expensive salons can eat up the galleons, but leave you with a style worth only a few knuts…to get the look you want, don't be shy about taking control of your own hair care…as easy as two simple charms and you can have the hair you've always dreamed of…

'Well…' Ze murmured. 'I've never exactly dreamed about hair…' But, there was no denying that it would be nice. And she'd been planning to change it anyway. A quick glance up had her meeting her own eyes in the small vanity mirror Serena had hung above the table. It was large enough that Ze could clearly see the shaggy puff of ungoverned strands surrounding her head. She glanced back down at the book, which boasted a picture of a witch with a short, sleek bob that swished and fluttered with each flick of her head. As easy as two simple charms…

You were going to have to do something about it anyway, her common sense cajoled. And really – this way you won't have to bother someone else. What were you going to do, ask Sirius to cut it for you? Ha! That's brilliant – why don't you see if he fancies painting your toenails while he's at it! She chewed on her lip for a moment and stared at herself in the mirror. The face staring back at her was filled with indecision. And somehow, she found herself convincing it. After all, the clothes – once she'd discovered the proper spell – had been relatively simple. A few hours and a bit of trouble had gone into it, but in the end everything had turned out roses. And this time she'd have a book telling her what to do every step of the way… It was a brilliant plan. That's what they said about turning cowpats into gold – and all they got was dungbombs her reflection seemed to say.

'Do you want to look like you've got a badger on your head forever?' she asked it sternly. It shook its head solemnly back. 'Right,' she told it. 'Then let's get on with it, shall we?'

And, sliding her wand out of her pocket, she began to read.


	16. She Wants Revenge

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 16: She Wants Revenge

By the edge of the Black Lake Lily Evans tucked her knees to her chest and replayed the morning's events in her mind. It was not a quick or easy process, and she remained seated beneath the spreading branches of an ancient oak as morning bled into afternoon, and afternoon into evening. Dark clouds scudded across the sky, perfectly matching her mood as the wind twined through her hair, teasing the hem of her robes and dancing out over the surface of the water. Again and again she played through the scene – arrival, confrontation, intervention – but no matter how she grappled, she couldn't seem to get a coherent hold on it. Finally, her head throbbing, she pushed aside all the pesky, coherent thoughts and allowed her emotions, to flood through - there was fear, relief, confusion, pity, even the cool still of logic. But beneath it all was a simmering vein of anger…

Now the only question was: who to direct it toward?

*.*.*.*

In the Gryffindor boys' seventh Sirius Black emerged from the shower to see James and Remus locked in a fascinating game of charades.

James, whose back was to Sirius, was gesticulating wildly and Remus was trying to keep up. 'Okay – three words – no – alright four words – well hold up the right number of fingers you idiot! Okay, four words! First word-' James did something that was either a very complicated Italian hand gesture, or an indication that he was quadruple-jointed. Remus stared. 'Um, epileptic bat? No – okay – dragon! Dragon eating a miniature duckbilled platypus! –'

'That's more than four words,' Sirius pointed out. Remus shot him what was unmistakably an Italian hand gesture, and went back to guessing.

'Okay…house! No? Building collapsing in earthquake! No…um…what? Someone standing up? No – no – okay – um, growing! Yes? Yes! Growing. Alright, growing – opening – blooming! Blooming – flower, blooming - Lily!'

James nodded enthusiastically. 'Knew we'd get there in the end,' Sirius muttered as he turned round to find a shirt.

Behind him he could hear Remus mumbling, 'okay, second word – sounds like –' and then there was silence. Sirius crouched down and shoved his left arm under his bed, rooted about for a moment, and came up with a wad of bluish fabric. He shook it forcefully, stepped back to avoid the resultant cloud of dust, and then gave it a passing sniff. Perfect. He was just pulling it over his head when the worry hit - worry that something terrible – like Revenge of the Fifty Foot Lily – had happened. And then he heard Remus throw up his hands and say, 'I have no bloody idea.'

With a roll of his eyes Sirius turned round, saying, 'For Merlin's sake, Prongs, just tell him whatever it –' But he stopped talking the moment he got a look at James, who had turned to face him. For a long moment he warred between howls of laughter and the desire to bury his head in his arms and sob over the painful nature of repetitive history. Finally he sighed. 'Couldn't she punch you in the eye? Just once? It'd take longer to heal, but bloody hell, at least you'd be able to talk.'

James shrugged. 'Ifths the naturfths of feths beasths.'

'What?' Remus asked.

Sirius just smiled. 'Better not let Evans hear you calling her a beast.'

Remus took a look at James, his lip swollen to the size of a small interstellar moon, and then at Sirius, who was wearing ancient jeans and a half-disintegrated tshirt. 'Right,' he said. 'So we're staying in – anyone fancy a deck of Exploding Snap?'

James, deciding that this was a game that required relatively little talking, nodded. Sirius, glancing at the clock, gave a shrug: he wanted to check up on Ze, but rather thought she'd come find him when she was ready. 'Sure,' he said.

And then he sat down, and waited for things to explode.

*.*.*.*

In the Great Hall Nigel Wythe pasted on his smuggest smirk and sauntered past the Gryffindor table with all the bravado he could muster – which was quite a lot, considering his knees were still shaking. He could hear the rest of the school, busy gossiping over its lunch prior to his arrival, suddenly change tempo.

Out of five Gryffindors and one Slytherin, the Slytherin was the first to reappear. Was it a triumph? Or was it a hoax? Instantly cross-house councils convened to discuss the possibilities. The Slytherins, exulting in the return of their champion, claimed absolute victory. In return the Gryffindors snarled that they wouldn't believe anything until they'd spoken with their own housemates. Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs took up seats along the sidelines, repeating the tastier theories to one another, adding details whenever something seemed a little thin.

By the time lunch was over, everyone knew for a fact that Lily Evans was completely innocent, James Potter slept in her underwear drawer, Nigel Wythe was really a girl, and that the pants actually belonged to McGonagall.

Only one question remained: just who was Ze Meridian, resident anti-heroine and slag célebré?

And more importantly, where was she?

'Hiding,of 'course,' a third year Ravenclaw said with gratingly superior certainty. 'Would you be showing your face if someone had just shown everyone your pants?'

'Detention,' was the opinion offered up by a far more rational fifth year. 'She's scrubbing out the loos, mark my words.'

Interestingly enough, both were correct – after a fashion.

*.*.*.*

While the rest of the school ploughed its way through pie and tawdry gossip in the Great Hall, Ze was, in fact, hiding…in a loo. And she was scrubbing something, too – but it wasn't a toilet. 'Oh piss oh piss oh piss,' she chanted as her hands raked through what was left of her hair. She risked a glance down at the book – still claiming that doing your own hair was the easiest thing in the world – which was lying open beside her on the basin. The trick to trimming is to be firm with the wrist – a swish that goes one flick too far can have disastrous results. 'No shit,' Ze growled. Her eyes came back up to the mirror, wincing and darting away immediately after they'd taken in the reflection.

With a quick glance at her watch, Ze began to fervently flip through the pages. There was no guarantee the others would be gone the entire day, and the last thing she wanted was to be caught looking like…well, there just weren't words. 'Adding length, adding length – I know I saw it – ah! Here we are…' she skimmed down the page, glossing over the exclamatory passage about how "easy" it was, and getting to the important bits – namely, the spell and how to perform it.

The illustrations were a bit dodgy – at one point the wrist seemed to go fully backward – but Ze didn't dare improvise. Sucking in a breath she readied her wand and gave the mess in the mirror one final stare. After a long moment spent gnawing on her lip and telling herself that it really couldn't get worse, she gave the spell a try.

And then: 'Oh piss.'

*.*.*.*

The following morning Sirius slept through five alarms, three pillow attacks, and the concentrated efforts of all the Marauders to wake him. Finally, giving up with a variety of curses and jabs, the others left, and he slowly came awake, the memories of strange twisted dreams in which he was being chased by a ravening pair of knickers swirling in his head. When he rolled off his bed and landed, on his stomach, on the floor, he turned to look under Peter's bed and saw two purple socks, surrounded by a fine powder of debris, daintily curled around one another with every appearance of a pair of kittens sleeping in a fluffy ball. 'Weird,' he breathed.

Ten minutes later he was yawning mightily and tapping down the stairs, well aware that it was going to take a miracle or some very serious sprinting to get him to class on time. But, he was fully dressed and had enough books and parchment in his bag to make it look like he was ready for academic adventure, which was really all that counted. Deciding there was no reason to rush, he stepped off the last stair and nearly collided with Serena, who was hurrying by, clearly thinking that class was something important.

'Oh – sorry! Didn't see you,' she said, managing to maintain her balance in her wobbly platform shoes. 'Looks like everyone's having a lie in this morning,' she added with a laugh. 'You the last one down?'

'Yeah,' Sirius replied, ambling towards the door in her wake. 'You?'

'Oh no,' she grinned, and shot a significant glance back at the girls' side. 'Ze Meridian's still up there. Can't blame her though – if it were me, I'd transfer to South America. See you in Charms!' And then she was gone.

Sirius paused and watched the portrait door swing shut. If it were me, I'd transfer to South America…

Was that a reference to yesterday's events, or had something else happened? What if Ze had had some sort of delayed nervous fit during the night? Or worse, what if she was up there with no clothes to put on? Better go check it out! his pituitary gland shouted, and for a moment he thought the rest of himself was going to go along for the ride. But the tiny island of conscience unswayed by his hormones demanded caution, and he turned to give the room a quick scan – better not to have anyone see him morphing into a large black dog and trotting up the girls' staircase. Had he not decided it best to check behind the curtain that closed off the window alcove, he would have seen Ze's head poke round the door. Once she was satisfied no one was there, she ran silently down the stairs, reaching the bottom just as Sirius stepped back into view, his wand clamped between his teeth in preparation for his animagus transformation.

'Ahhhhh!' she shouted as their eyes met, and for a moment he thought he'd bitten right through his wand. Her hands, rather than going to her mouth to cover the noise, instantly went to her head, gripping the black hat pulled low over her ears. 'What're you doing here?!' she cried breathlessly, at the same moment Sirius shouted, 'Where the hell have you been?'

For a moment they stared at one another. Sirius, distracted by the clothes that were now much closer to skimming long, sleek curves, fought not to sigh heavily. Ze, eyes latched on his face, watching closely for any sign of amusement or revulsion, fairly hummed with nerves. Sirius was so distracted by the new landscape – why had no one ever mentioned how alluring kneecaps were? – that he didn't notice the tips of Ze's ears going pink as she held her breath, waiting. Having reached her ankles, his eyes began a reverse skim, running back up over her body and discovering that she really did look different – taller and shapelier and – 'Why are you wearing that hat?'

Ze winced. 'N-n-no reason,' she mumbled, her eyes dropping to her feet as she tugged the edges of the cap down over her ears. 'Just, er – my head's cold.'

Sirius, who was only dim on occasion, was rapidly putting together the stutter and the nerves and the fact that there were no tell-tale tendrils of hair peeking out from beneath the hat. 'You know the teachers'll never let you have that on,' he said slowly, watching her face and catching another barely-concealed grimace.

'Well, you know, I might be coming down with a cold or something – thought I'd just pop to hospital –'

'It's your hair, isn't it?' Sirius asked gently.

'What?! No – I—I just don't feel all that well –' she gave a very unconvincing cough. 'Must be all this rain we're having –'

'Bollocks,' he said, taking a step closer. She took a step back, not liking the gleam in his eyes. 'You just don't want me to see-'

'Look!' she cried, pointing over his shoulder.

And Sirius, irrationally fearing a return of Peter's socks, turned to look. Ze, thrilled (if a trifle surprised) that this frankly sophomoric tactic had worked, ducked nimbly by him. But Sirius, who had quickly realised that there was no murderous footwear launching a guerrilla attack on his rear, spotted what she was up to and leapt after her, narrowly missing her shoulder. 'Will you just let me have a look –'

'Sorry,' she said rapidly in a high, nervous voice as they circled round a table. 'I've got to go- um- change my tie,' she added, backing slowly toward the girls' staircase. 'I'll catch you up- HEY!'

So busy retreating that she'd forgotten how quick he was, Ze wasn't prepared for Sirius to leap agilely over the table and, in one rapid motion, snatch the hat off her head. But there it was, dangling from his hand, leaving her head bare and visible…

'Oh,' Sirius said.

Ze felt a blush ignite somewhere around her toes and sweep up her body in fiery rush.

'Oh,' he said again, his mouth gaping a little as his eyes travelled over her scalp. 'Oh wow…'

Whatever he had imagined, it hadn't been this. He's suspected that she'd tried to give it a trim and just got the back a bit uneven – a few snips here, a few there, and everything could be put to rights. But this was…something else. Not being a hair aficionado, Sirius wasn't quite sure what words best described the situation. If asked to give a description he would have to say that her hair looked like nothing so much as a head of lettuce a rabbit has got halfway through chewing on. In some places, on the left half of her head in particular, the hair was standing off in short, tufty spikes, while in others the strands seemed to have mysteriously got longer. What was really disconcerting, however, was the fact that all of it seemed to be growing vertically off of her scalp, leaving her looking like a half-mowed, fully enraged porcupine.

'This is…' He gaped a bit. 'It's…'

'It's awful,' she said morosely. 'I've completely fucked it up.'

'Huh,' Sirius said. He rather thought it was the closest he could get to "well, yes" without risking bodily harm.

'Oh give it up,' she snarled, but there wasn't much heat in it. 'I know it's bad – I have got a mirror.'

'How did it- er…how did it…happen?' he asked gingerly, his fingers twitching with the urge to try and smooth bits of it down.

'Serena had a book,' she mumbled defensively, her chin dropping to her chest.

'You trusted a book that belonged to Serena?' he gasped.

'It seemed like a good idea at the time,' she said, knowing full well how ridiculous this sounded. She'd been self-sequestered in her dormitory since the afternoon before, desperately to correct the problem. But, like all truly desperate situations, the more she tried to fix things, the worse off they became. She hadn't counted on Sirius, waiting at the bottom of the steps as though he actually cared.

But no, here he was, looking the perfect mix of buttoned down and sleep tousled, those lovely grey eyes staring at her hair like it had recently escaped from the reptile house in the zoo. 'A good idea?' he repeated in a strangled voice. 'Zaz, Serena thinks Spellbound and Witch Weekly are well-researched news magazines – why the hell would you trust anything she'd be reading?'

'I don't know!' Ze cried, throwing up her hands and looking close to combustion. 'I don't know, alright? It was just that I had finally got all my clothes fixed, and I was on my way out and it caught my eye – it was called Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow or something, and it said doing your own hair was the easiest thing in the world! And since my Mum trims mine up for me, I thought "right, this can't be too bad" and I just…I just…'

Sirius leaned closer to her, staring in fascination at the longest bits of hair, which seemed to be swaying gently all on their own. Realising how impolite this was – and how mortified Ze looked – he immediately stepped back and tried to reassure her. 'Its not…its not…it not really th-that b-b-b –' he broke off, in part because he just couldn't say it, and in part because she was glowering at him. 'Look, I can't lie, alright? It's horrible – I've never seen anything like it, not even James after a night of Pixie Tag.' Ze, familiar with this custom, winced. 'But,' Sirius went on, 'but…there has to be something we can do, right? I mean, you can hardly be the first person to- well – to completely stuff her hair up at school, can you?'

She sighed and rubbed her nose. 'That's sort of what I thought,' she said glumly. 'I was going to sneak down to the matron and see if she couldn't put me right.'

It was Sirius's turn to frown: Madame Digweed, the school nurse, had a habit of asking awkward questions like "hm, and how, exactly, did you come to have that octopus on your head?" before fixing things. Whether she'd trained at The Chinese Water Torture Medical College or was just a sadist by nature, Sirius didn't know precisely, but she was a great believer in "natural healing". If the malady wasn't life threatening or excruciatingly painful, she often sent the sufferer off with the expert medical advice of "chin up, it'll be gone within the week". While the diagnosis might be accurate, and the treatment plan successful, this didn't bolster the social standing of the student whose eyebrows were growing out in curls.

'Don't know if Madame Digweed would be the best,' Sirius told Ze honestly. 'She could probably put you right,' he added quickly when Ze began to look panicked, 'but she can be a bit, er…cruel.'

Ze blinked. 'But she's a nurse.'

'Yeah, well, it takes a pretty twisted person to feed someone Skelegrow, doesn't it?' he pointed out.

Ze frowned and tipped her head on one side. 'You might have a point.'

Sirius, distracted by the fact that, while her head was tipped a good twenty degrees to the left, her hair was still pointing straight up, just said, 'huuuuh.'

Ze, mortified that he was staring, once more, in horrified fascination, swallowed down a groan. 'I have to do something. Now. You don't know how to fix it, do you?' she asked suddenly, her face filling with hope. 'I mean, you've never had to put James right…' she trailed off as he was slowly shaking his head. 'No,' she sighed, 'of course not – stupid question. Right,' she added, with a cheer so false it made her teeth ache. 'If you'll just hand that hat back, I'll be off to see-'

But Sirius, whose face said he was either having an epiphany or his kidneys had learnt to tapdance, was holding up a finger in the universal "wait a tick" sign, and Ze paused. He was eyeing her hair and then, to her astonishment, looking at his watch. 'Go change clothes,' he said suddenly.

'What?'

'Your clothes – go change them,' he said rapidly, shoving the hat back into her hand. 'Put on something nice, if you've got it – something that doesn't look like a student, yeah?'

'Sirius, what're you-'

He had already turned toward the boys' side of the stairs, his robes whirling round him, but at the sound of her voice he turned back, wearing a wide grin. 'I know a place that can fix your hair – I think. But we'll have to sneak down to the village and pretend like we're not at school anymore. Think you could handle that?' he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

It was a blatant challenge, but Ze had long ago learned that you didn't have to take every one of those that was put to you. And there was also the fact that going out somewhere with her hair like this was frankly terrifying. 'The village?' she repeated. 'Come on – we'd never make it without someone spotting us. And there – the bell's just gone, we can't bunk off lessons two days in a row-'

'First, I can get us to the village without anyone seeing us, and second, I remember a time last year when we bunked off for three days together to train for quidditch so…what's your point?' he was still grinning crookedly, his handsome face alive with the idea of adventure.

For a long moment Ze wavered between scepticism and the desperate desire to believe he was right. 'You really think they can fix this?' she asked finally, gesturing to her hair, which was now undulating slightly, like sea grass in a fish aquarium.

For a moment he looked less than sure. And then the grin reasserted itself. 'They can hardly make it worse.'

'Bastard,' she said, beginning to smile.

'Pansy,' he shot back.

And then they both went thundering up their respective sets of stairs, each wondering why this suddenly seemed like fun.

*.*.*.*

In five minutes Sirius was back in the common room wearing his best jeans and picking lint off the sleeves of the soft black jumper Mrs Potter had given him last Christmas. He'd kept his lace ups on, as they were nicer than his trainers, and if he still looked a bit young, at least he could pass for a year or two out of school rather than a year or two left in it. Steps clattering down the girls' stair had him turning to see Ze emerge, her school kit changed out for a pair of corduroy trousers and a jumper with one of those wide necks that left her shoulders almost bare. She'd changed her serviceable hat out for a great woolly knit cap in brilliant colours that ensconced her entire head and had a small brim hanging over the side of her face.

Noticing that his eyes were fixed first on the top, then on the hat, she sighed. 'I borrowed them both from Serena, 'cos I don't own anything this nice. And the hat, well… s'better than mine.'

'Right,' Sirius said slowly, his eyes still on the fuzzy wool. 'Whatever you say…'

With a roll of her eyes Ze headed for the portrait hole, saying, 'Right, so are we disguising ourselves as house elves out for a shop, or have you got an even better idea up your sleeve?

Sirius, guessing that the tartness in her voice stemmed from nerves rather than genuine anger, ambled after her. 'As it happens, I have got a better idea - we're going to sneak out through a secret tunnel while wearing an Invisibility Cloak.'

She stared at him, completely nonplussed. 'Riiiiight.'

'No, really - look.' And with a delightful flourish, he pulled a silvery, rippling length of fabric from his pocket. 'It's James's,' he explained when she just stared at the shifting, liquid cloak. 'He won't mind if we borrow it though.'

'Are you joking?' she sputtered. 'He probably bought it in Zonko's – there's no way its real!'

'I've snuck right past you loads of times wearing this thing, so I know it works. Now come on before someone comes looking to see where we are.'

While she was still staring at him, gobsmacked, he swirled the cloak around them and pulled out his wand. She stared up at him, only inches away, the world a filmy blur around them through the panels of the cloak. 'You're sure about this?'

He shrugged. 'Mostly.'

She took a deep breath. 'Good enough for me. Which way then?' she asked as they moved toward the portrait hole.

'To the left.' And then, after the Fat Lady had swung irritably closed behind them: 'You're not scared of spiders, are you?'

'Not unless they're bigger than me,' she replied.

He thought for a moment. 'I think we'll be alright then. Okay, turn here…'

*.*.*.*

Forty minutes later Ze stepped through a door into an alleyway, noticing that the dustbin to her directly in front of her was labelled "Hogsmeade Village". Up ahead she could see the high street with its brightly painted front doors and glittering window displays. Behind her, Sirius emerged into the light and carefully pulled the door shut behind them. The moment it closed it melted back into the wall, becoming part of the brick face. Ze watched in fascination, and then turned her gaze, undiminished, onto Sirius. 'You're bloody brilliant.'

His feet shuffled. 'Thanks.'

As he led the way out of the alley, she couldn't be sure, but she thought he was blushing.

Three left turns and one right later, they were standing before a door with a terribly minimalist awning overhead and the word CUT inscribed at eye level in industrial silver letters. To the left of the door a tiny plaque, just above a bell push, read " chic and sleek designs for the modern witch and wizard".

'You're sure this is for hair?' she asked, balking.

'Yeah, it just looks like a torture club,' he told her seriously. When she just shot him a dubious stare he sighed. 'This is where Grace came to get her hair done – it's pretty dear, but she always said they were the best, so it was worth it.'

'I just don't think cutting more off is going to help,' Ze mumbled darkly.

'Look, if anyone can sort you out, its them.'

'Thanks Sirius,' she sighed. 'That honestly makes me feel better.' And then she pulled the door open and left him standing outside, trying to decide if she'd been mocking him or not. Don't make this any weirder than it already is mate, he told himself firmly, and, with a shake of his head, followed her in.

Inside the salon was all black-painted brick and chunky, welded fixtures. Chairs, tables, and things that looked frightfully like torture devices were scattered about, all of them sleek and black with silver bits. When the door opened a grating chime sounded, and Sirius looked over to see that Ze was standing before what appeared to be the appointment desk. So far no one had arrived to help her – but then, it was only a few minutes past nine – hardly well into the workday.

Even as he was thinking this a voice said, 'Hello pet,' and both Sirius and Ze jumped, turning to see a tall, thin wizard with brilliantly orange hair approaching from the back, his smile wide and preternaturally white. 'Did you have an appointment?'

'Er, no,' Ze replied, and with a nervous flick of her hand, pulled the cap off her head. 'But I do have an emergency.'

The wizard glanced at her hair and arched a brow. 'Is that a wig?'

'What? No!'

'Good – not as much of an emergency as it could be then. But, I see what you mean. Well!' he added, before Ze or Sirius could punch him, 'today is your lucky day pet – I've got an opening right this moment and I'm sure we can sort you out. Now, I'm Franny, pleasure to meet you…'

'Ze,' she supplied when he trailed off. 'I'm Ze, and this is Sirius,' she added, gesturing behind her.

Franny's eyes darted back, fixed on Sirius, and widened. 'Hello,' he said with another blinding smile. 'Fancy a trim?'

Sirius, not quite sure what a "trim" would entail (and suspecting that it would be more than a haircut) immediately declined. 'No thanks – I, er, prefer it a bit long.'

'So do I love, so do I,' Franny said with a cheeky wink, and Ze snorted with barely suppressed laughter. Sirius shot her a glare, and she desisted. 'Well then, right this way Ze - bit of an odd name, that. What's it short for?' he asked, taking Ze's arm and leading her toward an iron-fitted contraption that looked more like a stretching rack than a chair, which was set before a bevy of mirrors.

'Er, Zenobia,' Ze replied, eyeing the array of products uneasily - many with sharp, gleaming edges. 'Now, when you say "sort me out" – '

'Oh, you can trust me,' Franny immediately assured her, his hand going to his own impressively unusual coif. 'I do excellent work.'

'I'm sure you do –' Ze began again.

'Now,' Franny said, speaking over her as Sirius came to stand just to the side, leaning against the wall and grinning widely. 'We haven't got much to work with, but it seems to be in good condition,' he said, seeming completely ignorant of the fact that Ze's hair was braiding into spikes…all by itself. 'We'll just even things out a bit,' he added, running his hands through the asymmetrically cut strands, electrifying them further. But instead of looking pained, Franny froze and appeared to transcend into a state of bliss. 'Cor,' he breathed, sounding almost in heaven, 'you've never touching this, have you pet? No dyes, no styling products…virgin hair.' The last was said on a reverent gasp.

Ze was staring at him in the mirror with a mixture of disbelief and horror, and Sirius couldn't blame her: Franny looked perilously close to having a very personal experience. 'No…' Ze said slowly. 'I've never put any products in it-'

But Franny wasn't interested in hearing about her disastrous attempts at do-it-yourself styling. 'Merlin Morgana and Circe,' he sighed. And then: 'Oi! Moira!' Both Sirius and Ze jumped at the change in volume, Franny's shout echoing through the caverns of metal and brick.

'What?' a voice asked as a petite witch appeared around the edge of the cubicle, her hair shoulder length and mercilessly styled with a razored fringe.

'Have a feel of this,' Franny ordered, pointing to Ze's hair.

'Don't mind him love,' Moira said to Ze as she approached, 'he's all sorts of odd – Oh my bleeding stars!' she yelped, her hands having wound into Ze's hair. 'This stuff is amazing!'

Ze was now shooting Sirius very nervous glances in the mirror, and he was trying not to laugh outright. 'Get a load of those follicles,' Franny was saying, 'tighter than a schoolboy's-'

'Don't say it,' Moira warned. 'Young ears.'

'Necktie,' Franny said, his eyes wide and suspiciously innocent. 'Well, you know what I mean,' he added. 'And the texture…it's like silk.'

'Er…' Ze began, and Moira glanced at her in the mirror.

'You've got virgin hair,' she explained kindly, her voice raspy and low. 'We don't see it often, seeing as we don't handle children. You're going to keep it short, yeah?' she asked suddenly, switching direction completely and throwing Ze off.

'What?'

'Your hair – you are going to keep it short, aren't you?'

'Well, I'd really settle for all of it being the same length –'

'Good, you've the bone structure for it,' Moira nodded. 'I'd suggest a bit of a fringe over the eyes here, and these front pieces left a bit long –'

'Oi, this is my client, thank you,' Franny broke in. 'You go colour The Cow.'

'She's not here yet,' Moira immediately replied, 'so I'll just sit a moment, thanks.' With that she moved to the wall, spotting Sirius, and, after giving him a slow glance over, her eyes went back to his hair. 'Don't suppose you'd like a trim?' she asked, and Franny sighed.

'Already asked him,' he said morosely.

'Pity,' Moira murmured, and Sirius found his own eyes darting nervously away.

'Now,' Franny was saying to Ze, 'let's see what we can do. I'm assuming you want me to fix this, yeah?' he asked, meeting Ze's eyes in the mirror as he swirled a black cape over her and fastened it behind her neck.

'I want to look like a girl,' Ze said flatly. 'Just do whatever you can.'

Franny's brows arched, but he shrugged. 'Like a girl. Got it.'

Sirius wasn't precisely sure what Franny had got, but he certainly seemed to be enjoying it. Over the next hour he fluttering around Ze's head, his wand flicking and flittering, his hands darting here and there as her hair – at first rebelliously resistant – gradually began to behave. Sirius couldn't tell if it was actually getting shorter or longer, but at least it wasn't standing on end anymore. When Franny was finished, he ruffled his hand through the strands once, shot a drying spell at them, and beamed mistily at his creation. 'Oh, that's beautiful,' he said softly, turning Ze's chair so she could see the mirrors. 'Alright then pet, let's have a look. Well go on then, open your eyes,' he prodded when Ze didn't move.

Slowly she cracked one eye open, and then the other, and then she was staring at herself in the mirror, looking vaguely surprised. And Sirius was surprised too – because she really did look… wow. He'd never thought of her hair before, he supposed – it was just hair, growing in a short, shaggy ball around her head. Now it was…well, it was a bit like James's hair, all messy and dishevelled, but in a really attractive, effeminate way. Somehow the new cut emphasised her cheekbones, and the wide, soft line of her mouth. Eyeing Franny with newfound respect, Sirius nodded. 'Looks nice,' he managed to say, not really knowing what words and phrases one used to discuss a haircut. Grace had always gone in for "length" and "body", but Sirius felt that neither of these properly applied.

'You look brilliant,' Franny assured her, and Ze nodded slowly.

'Thanks,' she said. 'I rather like it. Er, do I have to do anything to make it look like this? Because I'm not the best at –'

'Oh no, that's the beauty of these short styles,' Franny hurried to explain. 'Just muss it up a bit while it's damp and it'll dry perfectly.'

'Perfectly?' Ze repeated.

'Perfectly,' he assured. 'Now, let's get you a maintenance visit…'

*.*.*.*.*

Outside the salon, her pockets quite a bit lighter, Ze couldn't stop running her fingers through her hair. 'How did he do that?' she asked dazedly. 'I mean…how?'

'Everyone's got talents,' Sirius said absently. He was so absorbed watching Ze – and the silly little smile that wouldn't go away – that he missed a break in the brickwork and stumbled.

'You alright?' she asked instantly, catching his shoulder to steady him.

'Fine,' he assured, feeling unaccountably embarrassed – she'd seen him fall off his broom into the mud, what did a stumble matter?

For a few moments they walked in silence, and he had the horrible feeling she was trying not to laugh. And then, with a sound that in a lesser girl would have been a giggle, Ze swung her arm through his and skipped for two steps. 'I've got real hair!' she said exuberantly, spinning him around in a circle. He couldn't help laughing – it was such a silly, juvenile reaction. And it was also incredibly cute. She caught him staring at her and ducked her head down. 'You probably think I'm an idiot, acting like this over a haircut…'

'It is a bit odd,' he conceded.

'Yeah? Well if your hair looked like a demented lawnmower had got hold of it, you'd be miserable too.'

'No,' he shot back, 'I'd be James.'

As they turned back into the alley that led to the passage door, Ze realised that something – besides her hair – had been nagging her for a good while. And, despite the options (which included public humiliation on a massive scale, the fact that she hadn't attended a lesson in two days, and the possibility that this entire debacle might be noted on her permanent record), she felt that it was something she hadn't yet thought of.

'I'll go first,' Sirius offered as he tapped the bricks with his wand - exactly like the entrance to Diagon Alley Ze thought absently. 'That way I won't keep stepping on your heels.'

And just like that, Ze knew what it was. She nodded to him, allowing him to enter the passage ahead of her, but as she closed the door carefully behind them and watched the light disappear as it resealed into the wall, her brain was whirling. She was standing in a dark, subterranean tunnel that looked to have been carved by dwarves, inhabited by zombies, and finally conquered by spiders. And she was okay with it. Why? Because Sirius Black said there was nothing to worry about.

Since when did she trust Sirius Black about – about - anything? Let alone her livelihood, her hair, and her knickers? In that order, too, she thought numbly. What had happened that had suddenly made him the first person she sought out when crisis struck – the person she would prefer to ask for help? Because that was certainly true. Clive hadn't even crossed her mind as a potential aid, and Jack, she was startled to realise, hadn't either. Oh, she would feel perfectly comfortable talking about recent events with either one of them – in fact, she desperately wanted to write Jack a nice long letter – but her instinctive reaction had been to go to Sirius.

Which was, plainly, strange. She and Sirius had never been particularly close. In fact, for the last six years she had been vaguely intimidated by him – not because he was rude or overbearing, but because he was…Sirius. Slightly moody, slightly withdrawn with those he didn't know well, but in the same breath absolutely mad and mischievous with those he did. There was an intensity to him that, combined with his phenomenal good looks, had made her slightly wary. And then, of course, there had been Grace…

'Oi! Mind your –'

'Ouch!'

'Head,' Sirius finished. 'Sorry – thought you'd seen it…'

Ze, rubbing her temple, which it had collided with a large stone outcropping, tried to glower at him in the dark. After all, he was the person who had her so distracted. And then she realised that the stone she'd thumbed her head on was actually the lintel of the low doorway to the stairs. 'We're here already?' she asked dumbly, peering up into the dark, knowing that above her stretched thousands (well, at least hundreds) of narrow, winding stairs, leading up into to the castle.

'Mmm,' Sirius replied, sounding as though her were lost in his own thoughts as well. Ze, shrugging, followed him into the dark. 'It's probably safe to light your wand now,' he said after a minute or two of climbing, shaking his own wand to produce a bright bluish glow. 'It's just that in the tunnel, the light draws the spiders right to you – dunno why.'

'Yeah,' Ze murmured, not particularly caring if the spiders came or not. Sirius was ahead of her on the stairs, which were steep and winding and required about a three riser break between them…which put her eyes on perfect viewing level with his bum. All thoughts of emotional turmoil, an aching brow, and the possibility that she might be eaten by an arachnid had gone completely out of her head in favour of he should really wear those jeans more often. Despite the fact that she was more of a forearm girl, she wasn't about to let her preference for the brachial interfere with her enjoyment of the posterior – and what a nice posterior it was. 'Climb these stairs often?' she heard herself ask.

He turned his head over his shoulder and gave her a puzzled look. 'Yeah – why?'

She smiled, slow and wide. 'It shows.' And with that, she settled back to enjoy the view. Today might have started out crap, but it was definitely getting better…

*.*.*.*.*

'And will you look at that?' Sirius grinned, whipping the cloak off of them and giving her a smug glance. 'To the village and back, and nobody knows but us.'

'And Franny.'

Sirius performed a shiver that was only slightly overdone. 'Don't think I'd fancy another meeting with him.'

'Really?' Ze asked, it being her turn to grin cheekily. 'But he's so longing to give you a…trim.'

'I think I'd rather let you do it,' he joked. And then immediately froze, his eyes darting to her face. He'd meant it literally – hadn't he? Just a bit of gentle mocking, picking at her own disastrous attempt at hair styling? Or had he meant it the other way…

Ze, her cheeks faintly pink, ran a hand through her newly shorn hair. 'Ha,' she managed. 'Er…um…'

Sirius cleared his throat.

'Right!' she said. 'We should probably go to class – if we get changed we can meet the others for lunch.'

'Yeah,' he said, a trifle unconvincingly. 'Yeah – brilliant. I'll just, er, meet you back here in a few minutes?'

She nodded, and they turned toward their respective stairs. But just as he'd set foot on his, she said, 'Sirius?'

He turned to see her standing at the foot of the girls', chewing on her lower lip and looking decidedly fey. 'Yeah?' he asked, and swallowed.

'Thanks.'Whether it was the intonation or the expression he didn't know, but as he listened to her feet flying up the stone risers, he couldn't stop the silly grin stretching across his face.

*.*.*.*

Ze carefully folded Serena's jumper and returned it to her wardrobe. She never would have borrowed it if the other girl hadn't offered, on several occasion, to loan Ze some of her things. 'We're almost the same size!' Serena would say, smiling cheerfully. Ze privately thought that some of this generosity stemmed from Serena's desire to remind both of them that she knew Ze was a girl.

And, Ze thought with a tremulous smile, hopefully everyone else would remember it too. She was just glancing down at her new and improved school kit when the door slammed open with incredible force. Ze jumped and turned to stare. In the doorway stood…something. For a moment Ze thought the librarian had finally gone mad and morphed into a monster made entirely of mouldering old books, but then she spotted the jaunty lavender bow just visible above the mountain of parchment and binding.

'Hi Dorcas,' she said as politely as possible.

Dorcas tottered across the room, her wand guiding the books before her, and settled them on her bed with the sort of care usually given newborn infants. She then turned to stare beadily at Ze, pushing her glasses sharply back up her nose. 'I've just been doing research on our History of Magic essay,' she said, completely ignoring conventional conversation tactics and going for a blind-side assault. 'It's fascinating.'

'We have an essay due for Binns?' Ze asked, her mind completely blank, Dorcas's strategy taking full effect. Of course he would assign one while she'd been skiving –

'I think he'll be announcing it this Wednesday,' Dorcas replied, making it sound like a holiday party rather than homework. 'It's on the invasion of Britain.'

By what, the pod people? Ze wanted to ask, but refrained. 'Sounds incredible – getting a start on the books?' she said instead, gesturing to the large tome Dorcas was absentmindedly stroking like a favourite pet.

'Of course. I hate sharing my materials.' Ze nodded, wondering if Dorcas knew what day it was – or even what year. And then the other girl said, 'Although…' Ze glanced, and almost recoiled from the look Doras was shooting her: Ze had never thought Dorcas could look sly, but the other girl was positively dripping with guile. 'I'd be willing to share my resources of course,' she said with a sickly smile. 'You know, if you would share yours…'

'Er,' Ze said weakly. 'I'm really not much on history…'

'Oh I know that,' was the immediate reply, and Ze felt affronted (honestly, she wasn't stupid), but Dorcas was going on in that devious tone, and Ze realised she had better listen. 'I meant your, er, human resources.'

'Not following,' Ze said after a moment, hoping this wasn't the moment when Dorcas confessed that she was actually a vampire whose preferred vintage was AB negative.

'Well, you do know lots of people – you know, like Potter, and Black…and Rob McEneany.' Dorcas was running her hand nonchalantly down the spine of a book, but the look she shot Ze was anything but casual. 'I rather have an…interest in them.'

'Oh,' Ze said, nodding, trying to stifle a hysterical giggle. 'An…interest?'

'Yes,' Dorcas said sibilantly, striking a pose that was reminiscent of Queen Victoria. 'And I rather think you might have the same…interest. You see, they've been running amok lately – doing all sorts of terrible things to nice, innocent people, and, well…' her eyes snapped up to meet Ze's, who jerked a bit. 'They've got to be stopped.'

'Stopped?' was all Ze could manage to get out.

'Yes. Stopped. Controlled. Bested. The only way to do it, of course, is to beat them at their own game,' Dorcas continued, taking a step closer. Ze struggled not to clutch her stomach and convulse with laughter. 'They deliberately humiliate people, and they think they can get away with it! And I'm going to show them they can't!'

For a long moment Ze thought that this was going a bit overboard. And then she remembered what she'd seen on Saturday when she'd returned to the common room in such a strop – namely, Rob snogging Dorcas for a joke. And suddenly, it wasn't quite so much funny as hilariously right. 'You want revenge.'

'After a fashion,' Dorcas replied, back to being sly. 'And really just on Rob – Potter and Black aren't my problem, but after yesterday, well, I thought you might be willing to join forces. Or that in the least you could give me a few…pointers. I'd be willing to return the favour, of course – I'll make sure you get a top mark on the essay, I just need a little…assistance with my, er, strategy. You know, if you could pass on a bit of information…'

Ze almost shook her head and laughed; she definitely didn't need Dorcas's help with the essay (honestly it was Binns) but she wouldn't object to seeing Rob taken down a peg or two – especially if Dorcas was doing the taking. And, if Ze had the right of it, Dorcas would need help, not being a natural prankster. 'I suppose I could do that…' she said slowly. 'Not anything really secretive of course,' she added, again stifling a smile at the thought of knowing anything really secretive about Rob in the first place, since he was more or less proud of everything he did and didn't mind sharing…even when it was gross.

'No of course,' Dorcas was saying, in the sort of tone that says "I'll get it out of you eventually…"

'What did you have in mind?' Ze asked curiously.

Dorcas looked away and said vaguely, 'I hadn't really thought…'

You've bloody well planned, Ze grinned to herself, truly liking Dorcas for the first time in six years. Because, of course, if Rob had snogged her for a joke, she'd have been plotting too. But, instead of a gleeful smile, she adopted as serious and military an expression as she could, and began to bullshit. 'Well, it's usually best to start with the basics – you know, learn his patterns so you, er, know when to…strike,' Ze offered, channelling her inner Marauder and hoping this sounded like good advice rather than a shameless idea she'd pulled out of thin air. Probably she would need to consult Sirius and James about pranking - subtly, of course…

'Patterns?' Dorcas was asking.

'Er, yeah – you know, what time does he go down to supper, is he easily distracted, does he study in the common room, or the library, or his dormitory…'

'You mean his schedule, his timetable,' Dorcas nodded, whipping out a pocket diary with alarming flourish. She produced a stub of a pencil from somewhere and scrawled a few lines while Ze watched, fascinated. 'Well, go on,' she said, glancing up and nodding again.

'Um... His timetable, yeah, you should, er…get that down. He's got quidditch in the evenings, of course, and his lessons will be different than yours – you'll want to get all of that memorised…' Ze was rapidly running out of things to say, but Dorcas was copying it all down faithfully in her book. Bizarre.

'So I just watch him?' Dorcas asked, not looking up from her writing.

'Yes,' Ze said firmly. 'Now would be an excellent time to start,' she added, crossing her fingers behind her back. 'You know, just go down to the Great Hall, sit near him at lunch, pretend to read – but all the while you're watching him…'

'A cover mission,' Dorcas said with zeal.

'Yes, exactly, cover mission.'

'I'm on it,' Dorcas promised, grabbing up the nearest book, shoving her diary back into her pocket, and pushing her glasses up her nose. She marched to the door, turned to give Ze a salute, and then grinned – the first smile Ze had seen out of her since they'd been at school. 'Wish me luck.'

'Good luck!' Ze called, and Dorcas threw open the door and marched down the stairs, a woman with a cause. And then the entire episode registered. 'Bloody hell, what have I gone and done?'


	17. Taking a Tumble

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 17: Taking a Tumble

Sirius was glad the corridors were empty. Not because he didn't want anyone to see him walking beside Ze, but because he rather thought she needed the privacy to prepare herself. Or, at least, that's what he assumed she was doing. He couldn't really think of any other reason for her to be mumbling darkly under her breath. But he was getting just a tad bit suspicious…after all, she'd said "Dorcas" five times now.

'Er, you alright?' he asked as they approached the entry hall, thinking that if she was going to have some sort of fit and/or lose her bottle, she might as well do it here where the only observers were a few paintings and a suit of armour that was missing a vambrace.

'What?'

Sirius stepped in front of her and turned, effectively blocking her way. He briefly thought about putting his hands on her shoulders, decided it would be overkill, and instead settled for looking as serious as possible. 'Look,' he said, 'I know this is absolutely horrible for you, but it's just talk. If you remember that – and, of course, that in a day or so they'll have forgot all about you – you'll come through it fine.'

For a moment she stared at him, perplexed. 'Huh?'

Okay… 'Ahmmm – aren't you, you know, nervous 'cos of what they might be saying – about you? In the Hall? Everyone? Talking? About you?' He really didn't know how to make the point any clearer than that.

Ze, rather than crumpling under the formidable weight of this suggestion of social crucifixion, just said, 'Oh, you mean the gossip.' She paused for a moment. And then: 'No, that's fine.'

Sirius felt his jaw drop a bit. Still looking preoccupied around the edges, Ze made to step round him, and this time he did put out a hand. 'You're sure you've completely grasped it?' he asked, unable to believe that she really had and could remain so nonchalant.

'Yes,' she said, slightly irate. 'I think I can fathom that all the people who'd rather not think about their Artihmancy homework or just haven't got anything better to do are sitting in there, saying nasty things about me. That's what people do Sirius – we provide entertainment for one another, and the nastier the better. I'm just taking my turn.'

And this time she really did shake him off, taking two steps forward before she looked over her shoulder and sighed. 'Oh, don't look like that.'

'Like what?' he asked automatically, unconsciously pouting – after all, she'd completely brushed him off.

'Like a puppy that I've just kicked. I'm sorry, okay? You're brilliant for even putting up with me – now come on.' She got hold of his arm and, in a complete reverse of the situation he had imagined, towed him on towards the Great Hall.

Later Sirius would look back on the moment when they had first entered the Hall and reflect, with no small amount of smug satisfaction, that they couldn't have done it better. The rest of the school, freshly released from morning lessons, had just settled down to plough through gargantuan mounds of sandwiches. There was plenty of good-natured jeering between houses, and quite a lot of rumour-swapping. The buzz of conversation was not unlike the hum of a swarm of bees - which is to say, a perfectly harmless sound…until you realise they're swarming around you.

But it didn't seem to bother Ze a bit. She didn't pause dramatically on the threshold, or even dart her eyes around and take a fortifying breath. She just swung through the doors with her usual purposeful stride, long legs eating up the floor as she strode towards her habitual seat at the Gryffindor table. Around her the Hall went quiet, silence rippling out in her wake, blotting out conversation as everyone turned to stare. And Sirius, who was ambling after her, trying to echo her impeccable cool, couldn't help but grin.

Unlike Ze, who didn't seem to register that anyone had so much as noticed her, Sirius was taking stock of the reactions. And noticing how incredible, how unbelievable, how bloody brilliant she was to have pulled this off. Because it really was a stroke of genius.

They all recognised her, of course – it wasn't as though she had changed in any defining sense. She had simply taken what was there and refined it. She was still tall and narrow, still had short dark hair, still wore Gryffindor robes and walked with the unmistakable gait of a quidditch player. It was just that she'd tweaked that shell, that persona, ever so slightly, taking a bit here and adding a bit there until the things that had been there all along, overlooked, were suddenly unmistakable. And Sirius knew without a doubt that no one would ever mistake her for a boy again.

But it wasn't just her physical appearance that was drawing eyes – it was something else, too, something that in another person might have been called charisma, or even poise. In Ze, though, it wasn't as pronounced, as definable. It was more of a mystery, the sort of nonchalant air that says "well yes, of course you're staring – you should be", but never gave you any clue as to what you were staring at. And to everyone who had expected her to slink back into the flow of lessons, trying desperately to keep a low profile, it was a direct slap in the face. Because she wasn't hiding – not at all. She was inviting everyone to have a good, long look, just to see what all the fuss was about.

And it was working. Around them the school stared, fascinated. Girls were eyeing her with a sort of speculative envy and boys with open interest. And then the ripple of silence that had spread across the room touched the walls and came pouring back on itself, releasing a wave of sound that rolled and tumbled and built to a frenzy.

'Did you see-'

'Can't believe she'd have the nerve –'

'I can see, though, why they'd fancy her –'

'Her hair –''Blimey, she's fit –'

'Can't say I blame her-'

Sirius dropped down onto the bench beside Ze, glanced up at James and Remus who were eying him curiously, and said, 'Couldn't pass us the mustard, could you?'

*.*.*.*.*

Ze gave Rob the finger as was right and proper, and shoved the rest of her sandwich into her mouth. It had been a good lunch (apart from the palpable silence that had fallen when she'd first appeared), and it seemed perfectly normal to be ending it by stuffing her mouth full and telling Rob to go to hell – after all, he'd just told her football was rubbish. The bell rang, signalling the start of afternoon class, and she hastily grabbed up her satchel, ignoring Rob's inventively gesticulated replies. Still chewing the last of her sandwich, she stood and started to turn, nearly running into a sixth year Hufflepuff who was just climbing over the bench of her own table.

'Smpghthy,' Ze tried to apologise through her mouthful, expecting the girl to sneer and make a nasty comment about watching where she was going.

Instead, the girl just beamed at her and said, 'You're that Ze Meridian, aren't you? Love your hair.'

And then she was gone, bouncing down the aisle between the tables, chattering with her friends and gesturing – miraculously – at her own blond curls, as though she were asking them to imagine her hair short. Ze stared, mouth agape.

'Once you've chewed, you're supposed to swallow,' Remus told her.

'Smoghgy,' she said again, and swallowed as she fell into place between Remus and James, who were arguing over her head. Normally she would have joined in, but today she didn't even notice the topic.

Had she just got a compliment? On her hair?

It turned out that she had – and the bouncy Hufflepuff wasn't the only one who was enamoured of her new coiffure. In the corridors people would turn and look, and then murmur to one another. At first Ze was sure that this was just more gossip – annoying, but bearable – and then she began to realise that she was hearing words like "latest style" and "I wish I could wear mine like that" and it dawned on her that they weren't slagging her off – they were trying her on. The moment of cemented understanding came as she shuffled into Herbology. A tall, sleekly beautiful Ravenclaw tapped her on the shoulder and said, 'Where do you get your hair done?' as though it were a matter of gravest importance.

'Um…' Ze stalled, her mind completely blank. And then a picture of the tall, orange-haired Franny popped into her head. 'In the village,' she replied. 'It's called Cut, I think – by a guy called Franny.'

'Franny,' the Ravenclaw repeated, her tone indicating that this knowledge was akin to the location of the Holy Grail. 'Thanks.'

Ze just shrugged and took her seat between Remus and Sirius. The latter turned and arched a brow at her. She just shook her head wonderingly and said, 'This is mad.'

*.*.*

'There something you're not telling us?'

'We've just sort of got this hunch, you see…'

Sirius grimaced: he'd been waiting for his friends to catch him alone all afternoon. At least they'd waited until classes were over, just around the corner from the common room. But, now they'd caught him up, they weren't doing anything by halves: James and Remus each had an arm slung round his shoulders, walking on either side of him in a formation he knew well: Prelude to Interrogation. Normally he wouldn't mind – they knew almost everything about him anyway – but today he found that he just…didn't want to share. So he comforted himself by telling his conscience that it was Ze's business, and therefore she should be the one to divulge the information to her own friends. Yeah. Right. Perfect.

'Don't know what you're talking about,' he managed to say lightly. 'Unless it was that question about the antidote to ghoul bites – I noticed both of you were looking a bit puzzled.'

'Yeah, what was that?' James asked.

Zing! Sirius thought. One down, one to go.

But Remus, whose attention span was slightly longer than James's (that is to say, he actually had one), rolled his eyes and poked Sirius quite seriously in the ribs. 'This isn't about Herbology, and you know it.' James opened his mouth and Remus sighed. 'And it's Creeping Jeepers – remember, the one with the spikes?'

'Oh yeahhhhh.'

'So,' Remus continued, turning back to Sirius. 'What's going on with you and –'

'Where's Pete?'

This stymied even Remus. 'Ummm –'

'He was here just now,' James said, turning to look behind them.

Sirius was just congratulating himself on a definite win (and planning his subsequent escape) when a tremulous voice just around the corner said, 'Just don't make any sudden movements and you should be – AHHHHHHHHH!'

Sirius, Remus, and James flattened themselves against the wall just in time to avoid being mown down by two third year Gryffindors who came pounding, mouths gaping wide to issue screams of primitive terror, round the corner. Behind them, like small, smelly, non-orbital comets, came two purple blurs moving at top speed. Gobsmacked, the three boys watched them go.

Once the screams had faded, Sirius turned to the others and said, 'They've learned to fly?' in tones of deepest terror.

Remus swallowed convulsively and James whimpered. 'Th-those were…the socks,' he whispered. 'Weren't they?'

Remus nodded slowly, his eyes still staring sightlessly down the corridor. 'They could be anywhere,' he said softly, his knuckles white as he gripped his wand. 'Anywhere…'

'Come on,' Sirius ordered, hoping his voice didn't squeak too much. 'We've got to find Pete.'

James paled a shade further. 'Oh god,' he whispered. 'They've gotten him.'

And with that, the three remaining Marauders exchanged a glance of pure terror, and then went pounding down the corridor shouting as one: 'PETE!'

*.*.*

While the boys were having their merry chase, Ze was preparing for a run of a different kind – which, thankfully, didn't have anything to do with socks run amuck. In the courtyard below the clock tower she gave a great groan and bent forward, reaching down to wrap her arms round her knees. The stretch felt gloriously wrenching, and she realised that the events – disasters? – of the last few days had put her off her normal schedule. She hadn't had a run since Friday, and her body was feeling it. Now, dressed in shorts and running shirt, she felt the usual surge of anticipation as she finished warming up her legs.

The moment her foot first struck the earth, she felt something start to uncoil deep at the base of her spine, running up toward her head and down to her toes in a flood of cool, tingling relief. Did everyone feel this, just by lacing up their trainers and sorting out their legs? By pushing muscles and heart and lungs until the body shuddered and breath came in sharp, tight pants, the heart thudding a wild tattoo against the inside of the chest? Did everyone find this gloriously cathartic release? For Ze, running was as necessary as eating or sleeping – without it, the world went to sixes and sevens. Some people had meditation, some had journals and diaries, or word puzzles and games of chess. And all of those things were fine, even brilliant ways of sorting the mind and the soul, of easing the fractious, roiling torrents of uncertainty and confusion that well up in everyone from time to time. But for Ze, the ultimate introspection, the closest she came to inner Zen, were the moments when she was pushing her body to top performance, knowing that it was all happening inside her skin. And so as her feet pounded over the ground, her legs drawing her forward until trees and sky and earth were a circuitous, rushing blur, she felt the rhythm, defined by the pound of her feet, become the basic beat on which her body ran, and the gnawing worry that had infested her for the last few days drained away.

But as quickly as the worry fell away, new things – thoughts, feelings, emotions – came welling up in its stead. Ze, used to things shifting to the surface of her mind while she ran, let them come. For whatever reason, she didn't need to actually focus on them – the same bit of her mind organising her feet and legs, driving them forward with systematic efficiency, seemed to organise these thought fragments as well, sorting through them and forming patterns while the rest of Ze – the part of herself she privately thought of as the "responsible" bit – had a well-deserved breather. But today that subconscious, autopilot filing system wasn't doing its job, and after ten minutes of churning steadily uphill, she realised that she was actually going to have to pay attention.

Right – first. First? First would be…what? The strange glances she'd been receiving since her 'resurrection' at the lunch hour? Strange was certainly the word for them. Ze was familiar with the Hogwarts social structure, and she knew quite well that for the last day or so most of her classmates had been busy slagging her off for various reasons – most of them probably not even related to the Great Knicker Debacle. So why then, as the day progressed, had the average reaction morphed from saccharine snigger to contemplative curiosity? How had everyone, with the possible exceptions of Nigel Wythe and his cronies, suddenly begun to seem so…speculative? Food, her subconscious, lulled by the exertions of her body, said idly, for thought. Which was, of course, why she was thinking about it.

And, Ze discovered with no small amount of dismay, that quandary was only one of the multitude awaiting her. What had started as a gentle trickle of wayward thoughts was fast becoming a torrent of ideas and musings, flooding out and pooling, filling the space that was normally a bastion of peace whilst she was having a run. And then, as she toiled up the near-endless fell between Hagrid's cottage and the lake, she felt the air hitch in her lungs – not only from exertion, but from startling realisation: It had been ages since she'd spoken with Clive.

Guilt followed immediately on the heels of surprise, and she briefly closed her eyes, the better to mentally berate herself – a stupid decision, as she promptly stumbled, narrowly avoiding a nasty fall. Careful, you stupid cow, or you'll be in hospital for a broken ankle. But even near-disaster couldn't ease the vaguely queasy feeling in her stomach – Clive was her best friend at school, and here she'd been, ignoring him completely. Why, the last time she'd seen him had been…yesterday morning? Was that right? Well, yes, he had been in the boys' seventh when she'd gone in search of Sirius and James and her pants. But that had barely been a meeting – they'd walked toward the Great Hall together, until he'd had to diverge to meet Claudia. And other than that, she really hadn't seen him since…Sunday? Well, that was only the day before yesterday, and they had definitely spoken then – all that crap about slugs being warm at the breakfast table. And then on Saturday they'd had supper together, and talked afterwards in the common room…

Perhaps she had been around him, talking with him, regularly. So why did it feel as though she hadn't seen him for years? As though their last few meetings had been less-than-substantial, a going through the motions on both their parts so that they could each move on to other, more engrossing things? And who were you going to see? the sly, treacherous voice in the back of her head asked. Who did you abandon your friend for? Again, that vaguely nauseous grumble as she realised that the answer to that question was, unquestionably, Sirius Black. But Clive wouldn't have understood, she cried mentally, desperately attempting to defend herself. He couldn't have helped the way…Sirius can. But really, wasn't that bollocks? When it came down to nags and knackers, couldn't any boy have given her the advice (or lack thereof) Sirius had offered up so far?

Yes, her common sense replied, but it's not advice that you've needed him to give, really – it's support. And you can't say that Clive would've done as well. He might have done the same, but he wouldn't have done it as well…

Ze found herself, panting rather more raggedly than usual, at the top of the hill, her quadriceps both anticipating and fearing the long climb over the ridge and the twisting fall down the ghyll to the quidditch pitch. Whether this unusual degree of exhaustion stemmed from a multiple-day break from running, or from her definitely strenuous mental acrobatics, she didn't care to consider. She shook her head to clear it, tamping her thoughts down even as she worked to regulate her breathing, marshalling her stamina as she jogged along the rocky, steadily rising height. To either side the ridge dropped away in craggy slopes of grass and stone deep into ravines. But Ze wasn't concentrating on the views – she was making a promise to herself that, while she might be exploring new amiable territory with Sirius, she certainly wasn't going to keep on this way with Clive. In fact, after the quidditch training session today, she'd see if he fancied a game in the common room. It felt strange to strategise when it came to friends but – wait, strategise? Oh piss - Dorcas

This time the gastronomic lurch was almost pyrotechnic in its impact. What the bloody hell was she going to do with Dorcas?

Hand over Rob on a platter, her common sense said. This actually had her snorting with laughter – another poor decision, given her current occupation. Hand over Rob? The image that provoked was of the stringy ginger, arms and feet bound, arranged on a platter with an apple stuffed into his wide, grinning mouth. And strangely, it wasn't that odd.

She's got every reason to be angry, Ze admitted to herself, trying to sober the situation by bringing Dorcas into it. But the mental image of that bow didn't help matters. So she wanted to get even with Rob – brilliant. Grand idea. Best of luck. Why the fuck did I agree to help her?! That was it, of course – Ze was all for Dorcas revenging herself on Rob, but why, oh why, had she agreed to get into the middle of it? Hadn't she just learnt her lesson about getting between two people who had private business to work out? Of course, that had been Grace and Sirius, and Ze found that she actually liked Dorcas a lot more than she did Grace. At least with Dorcas you had some idea of what you were getting.

And face it, if your first snog had been for a joke, you'd be pissing mad, too. Alright, she told herself, so we're going to help her. How? Ze, despite her close proximity to the Marauders and their long history of pranks, hadn't ever joined in. She and Clive had been spectators on some of the famed Planning Sessions, but she got the distinct impression that there was a whole world – perhaps even a ritual complete with passwords and handshakes and cabalistic symbols – that they, as non-initiates, were not privy to. So really, how to go about setting something up? The trick, of course, would be to discover what would most disturb Rob-

'Oi!'

There was a flash of white shirt and black robes –

'Oh- shit -'

Limbs tangled, bodies collided, and with a breath-stealing slam roughly two peoples' worth of person tumbled to the ground.

Ze hadn't registered the crossing of the ridge, hadn't noticed that she was now thundering down the path at a sprint that was part muscular exertion, part ramming-speed momentum. But, as she and whomever she was tangled up with rolled to a stop, she decided that she was going to have to stop thinking – it was really throwing her off her stride.

'Are you alright?' a voice was wheezing.

'Huh?' Ze shook her head and refocussed her eyes.

And promptly realised that she was sprawled on the ground beneath a very flushed, very breathless boy.

'Jesus - you were really moving!' he panted, easing up from his elbows to kneel, not seeming bothered at all by the fact that he was, however innocuously, straddling her. When she just gasped, ineffectually trying to draw breath, he peered closer, his eyes narrowing with worry. 'You haven't hit your head, have you?'

Ze simultaneously noticed three things: the first, that she couldn't quite seem to breathe. The second, that this boy had rather nice eyes. And the third, that anyone who came along was going to get completely the wrong idea. With a Herculean effort she sucked in a bit of air and said, 'c-c-c-c-co-'

'Here, have you got the air knocked out of you?' he asked. 'Lift your up above your head,' he advised, lifting them for her as though she'd lost her mind, not her breath. 'Helps get things moving again –'

'C-c-could you get off me?' she managed to say.

For a moment he looked perplexed. And then he looked down, his cheeks flushing as he realised just what they looked like. 'Oh. Yeah. Right.'

It took a bit of awkward shuffling, but he managed to stand and offered her his hand. Still panting, she accepted it, pulling to her feet and then bending forward to put her hands on her knees. 'Thanks,' she said, concentrating on getting air in and out. After a moment she held one hand up and rolled it around, gesturing to include both of them, the steep incline she had been running down, and the patch of hillside they'd landed on – perhaps even the castle in the distance, too – she wasn't quite sure. 'Sorry about – wasn't watching where I was –'

Despite the fact that she was speaking in short, gasping sentences, he didn't seem at all offended. In fact, he seemed to be smiling in a sort of wide, goofy way. And she began to wonder if he'd hit his head. 'You're that Gryffindor chaser, aren't you?' he asked. 'Sorry, can't think of your name at the momen- Meridian!' he broke out, snapping his fingers. 'Ze Meridian.'

Ze, recovered enough to give him a speculative half-glare, eyed him slowly just to see if he was mocking her. 'Yeah?' The boy rocked back onto his heels, and Ze registered that he was decently tall, and rather fit – about her age then, with Hufflepuff tie and robe insignia, curling brown hair, a smattering of freckles on his nose, and those sparkling blue eyes. The freckles she didn't rate much, and the eyes dredged up no memories – but the Hufflepuff colours and the curling brown hair lit a spark of recognition. 'Eh, you're on Hufflepuff's side – keeper?'

'That's right,' he grinned. 'Ten points if you can get my name.'

Ze found herself grinning back – she couldn't seem to help it, he had the sort of smile you just had to smile back at. She didn't bother scanning her list of acquaintances for him, knowing that he wouldn't be there. Instead she dredged the mere of distant memory for an image of a Hufflepuff quidditch kit, specifically robes with a name done on the back in large, legible letters. She came up with Gorman, but knew that wasn't right – Gorman had been a beater, and he'd left school two years ago…In front of the goals, in front of the goals – come on, she chided, and then found herself snapping her own fingers. 'Cross – you're Cross,' she told him, grinning triumphantly.

'Five points then,' he laughed. ''Cos you got half of it – I'm Colin,' he added when she looked confused. 'Colin Cross. I mean, you can call me Cross, if you like, but most everyone else calls me Colin…'

Ze was feeling slightly out of her element. There was something in his manner that was just slightly…not what she expected. An edge to the joking that went beyond friendly banter. But then at the end he'd seemed a bit…nervous? Don't be daft – you've nearly trampled him, of course he's acting a bit funny! 'Colin it is then,' she said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. 'And I'm Ze.'

'Of course,' he said, assured and easy once more. 'I feel like I know you quite well – after all, I have seen your knickers.'

Ze felt her cheeks heat and told herself very sternly, you will not get shirty. 'You and the rest of the school,' she managed to quip lightly. 'So don't get any ideas.'

He seemed surprised at this, but pleasantly so – if the widening of his smile was anything to judge by. 'So, were you running away from the horde of blokes chasing you down for a date just now, or are you training to be a tackle in the front line for England?'

'Neither,' she replied, finally noticing the sting of a scrape on her knee and deciding that she'd had enough of a run for the day. 'And I play football, not rugby.'

'Ah, football's naff,' he said, falling into step beside her as she moved towards the footpath that led on to the quidditch pitch. 'Nothing to it but a lot of fancy footwork and one guy who can catch.'

'Right – and rugby's just about clumsy footwork and no guys who can catch,' she jibbed back, feeling completely on familiar ground for the first time since she'd bowled him over. This was an argument she knew off by heart, and if Colin Cross thought he was going to win it, he had better think again.

'Eh now,' he was saying defensively, 'you can't go judging us by the League alone…'

The conversation continued, never approaching true animosity, just remaining in the realm of good-natured ribbing between amicably opposing forces. It lasted the length of her walk, and it never occurred to Ze that there was anything more to it than friendly banter - it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he walk with her, and by the time they reached the pitch, Ze had decided that Colin wasn't so bad – in fact, he was really quite nice. She was almost embarrassed to discover that he was a seventh year, like herself, and that they had had Herbology lessons together since third year – a sad state, then, that she could only recognise him through quidditch. Although he freely admitted that he'd never really noted a Gryffindor off the pitch either, which made it a little better. He reminded her a bit of Jack, with his boyish smile and easy manner, and his conversation, though it lacked the perfection of true football obsession, was certainly entertaining. All in all, she wasn't entirely sorry she'd knocked him over – in fact, she was sorry she hadn't done it a year or two before, because she might have had a Herbology partner who actually knew what he was doing… And so it was with surprising reluctance that she glanced across the pitch to the knot of bodies in Gryffindor kits, and sighed. 'I'd better go meet them before they decide I've been eaten by Peter's lucky socks.'

Colin grimaced. 'Yeah, I heard about those – they got a third year in your common room, didn't they?'

'I think he just got bitten,' Ze replied. 'But rumours will abound.'

'Right,' he grinned, stepping backward. 'And I'd better go before they decide I'm here to steal your plays. I'll see you around though?'

'Yeah, 'course.'

For some reason, this had the grin stretching wider. 'Brilliant – laters.'

'Bye,' she called, turning to cross the grass to the changing rooms. She didn't bother to look back over her shoulder, but if she had, she would have seen Colin Cross watching her with a hopeful smile.

*.*.*

'What is it?'

'Dunno…what's that funny little sign for?'

'It looks sort of like a….'

'Nah, can't be…'

The Gryffindor quidditch side, minus Ze and Clive, were clustered in a small knot just before what had once been the door to the changing rooms. Normally they never would have paused here, but gone right on in and started putting on their manky practise kits. But today…today was different.

For one thing, the door to the changing rooms was gone. Not that this was a bad thing – it had been ancient, creaky, and horribly mildewed on the inside – but its absence certainly did change the look of the place. Now, instead of one large, steel-bound wooden panel, there were two doors, side by side. On the one to the left was a small wooden plaque with a very basic outline of a person on it – a person with two discernable legs and a round, hairless head. On the one to the right was a similarly designed outline, but this time the figure had rigidly styled flip-out hair to the shoulders, and a large bubble covering the region that vaguely delineated hips to knees.

'I think – I think its 'sposed to be a girl!' Allister Wood said nervously.

'Well spotted,' Zeke muttered.

'Oh come off it – like any girl dressed like that 'ud be coming down here,' Rob sniggered.

'So what's the point of them then?' James asked. 'New decorating scheme?' With that, he reached out a finger and prodded the sign with the man on it. Not surprisingly, a tiny mouth appeared on the carving and said, 'Oi! Mind who you're poking!' James sniggered, and stepped over to poke the woman, who didn't say anything – she just reached out one of her tiny arms and thumped James quite soundly on the index finger.

'Definitely supposed to be a girl,' Sirius laughed as James cried, 'ouch!'

In defence of the Gryffindor males, it must be said that the idea of signs telling you which space belonged to girls and which to boys was completely foreign. In toilets as in dormitories, there was a long established method of telling who was supposed to go where: if you could smell it from twenty paces, it was a gents'; if it didn't, it was a ladies'.

This age-old reasoning apparently didn't extend to quidditch changing rooms though. It was Sirius who, remembering Ze's snarled comments about unequal shower availability during her rant in Dumbledore's office, first comprehended the situation. 'It's a girls' changing room!' he said happily. 'She's actually got one!'

The others turned worried stares on him. 'Eh?' Rob asked.

'It's a changing room, but for girls,' Sirius repeated, his jubilation not in the least dimmed by their frankly confused expressions. 'She told Dumbledore that there was nowhere for her to change properly, and he's done her her own room!'

The light of comprehension was dawning in James' eyes now. 'Oh yeah… bloody hell, she's smooth.'

'Wait,' Zeke said, 'you mean Ze's got her own shower? That's not fair! We've all got to share, and there's barely enough room! We've got to take turns!'

This was a part of the equation that Sirius hadn't previously considered. 'Maybe they've done her a very small shower?' he suggested.

'Well bugger this – I'm having a look!' Rob cried, and gave the door with the woman on it a shove, sending it swinging inward. But the moment his foot crossed the threshold, a loud EEEEEuuuuurr! EEEEEEuuuuurrr! screeched out over the lawn.

All hands clapped over ears, and the boys backed away, Sirius shouting, 'Rob, come off it! You're not supposed to go inside!'

And Rob, sensing that the horribly loud noise was only the first abuse awaiting him, abandoned the doorway. The noise instantly stopped, allowing them all to hear the shout coming from behind them. 'Oi! What the hell have you done?'

They turned to see Ze sprinting toward them. 'We were just looking!' Rob said immediately.

She came to a halt a just by James and gave them all a probing glance. 'Just looking at what?'

Sirius and James stepped out of the way. 'See anything different?' Zeke asked.

For a moment Ze was as perplexed as the lads had been – after all, she looked a lot more like the figure signalling men's than the one for the women's. But, having grown up with Muggle public toilets, she quickly got the point. 'Bloody hell,' she mumbled. 'He's actually done it.'

The rest of the side watched as, with a religious acolyte's slow and awed gait, she stepped up to the door bearing the symbol for woman, and pushed through.

'S'not fair,' Rob muttered when no siren sounded to warn her off. 'I only wanted a peek.'

*.

Ze couldn't quite believe it.

It was the nicest changing room she'd ever seen – white tile floor and walls, with polished wooden benches and cupboards lining the wall. On the locker closest to the door a small silver plaque was inscribed with the word 'Meridian'. Ha! Even the boys didn't have that – they just had those nasty old shelves and hooks! Turning away from her new locker, she looked the room over again, noticing that at eye level there was a nice pattern of tile in pale blues and greens, breaking up the white. Against the opposite wall was a vanity with a simply framed mirror and three little jars holding tissues, cotton swabs, and what looked to be hand lotion – something else you'd never see in the boys' side. An arched doorway, again done in white tile, led her through to a long rectangular room with shower stalls, each closed off with a pristine white curtain. On a metal stand in the corner was as stack of enormous fluffy towels, each of them as snowy and bright as the tile.

The larger part of her knew that all that white was a mistake – it would be muddy and tatty within weeks. But a small part was quite pleased at the effort to make the place look nice. And, because they'd made the effort, so would she. No dropping muddy socks on the floor and leaving them, she promised herself. Then, because she just couldn't help it, she bounded in a circle and let out a yell of triumphant joy: she had finally been acknowledged as a girl who played sport.

And she had a shower.

*.

Ze emerged from her new terrain wearing a wide grin and carrying her broomstick – it had thoughtfully been stored in her locker, along with her practise kit and her match robes. She hadn't bothered putting on the long leather chaps over her running shorts, but she had got her shin and arm guards on, and was wearing the mud-splattered over-robe that gave her the same reach and range her match kit did. It felt bloody fantastic to know that once training was over, she wouldn't have to haul the lot of it back up to her dormitory.

'So?' Sirius asked, emerging from the boys' side, adjusting an armguard. 'How is it?'

'Brilliant,' she grinned. 'I've got my own shower!'

'Don't tell Zeke,' Sirius advised. 'Or Rob,' he added, having considered the possibilities. 'You been running?'

She glanced up to see that he was eyeing her shorts, and, more specifically, the scrape on her knee from her tumble into Colin Cross. 'Yeah,' she shrugged. 'Had a bit of a fall – s'alright though, I landed on so-.' But Sirius wasn't interested in hearing about how she met Colin – he wanted to make sure she was alright, and didn't hesitate to interrupt.

'You sure?' he was now bending down, eyeing the scrape closely as though it were a gangrenous gash, not a mild abrasion. 'It's still bleeding a bit – maybe you should –'

'Sirius,' she laughed, 'it's fine – I can still move, see?' She bent her knee to demonstrate, and his eyes went a bit fuzzy, like something had just completely distracted him.

'Yeah,' he mumbled, straightening up and tugging, inexplicably, at his collar. 'Yeah.'

'Sorry I'm late –'

'There you are!' Ze grinned, turning round to see Clive hurrying toward them. Her wide smile hitched a bit though, when she saw that Claudia was behind him – or, rather, it hitched when she saw that Claudia was behind him and staring straight at her with less than a friendly eye. 'And, er, Claudia – how are you?'

'Fine,' Claudia replied, a touch frostily, her eyes sweeping up and down Ze, focussing on the scrape on her knee. 'Aren't you a bit chilly?' she added, cocking a brow up.

It took Ze a moment to realise that this wasn't in reference to the weather, but to her running shorts, which, being running shorts were rather short. 'Oh I'll be fine – you really heat up once you start moving,' she said, flashing a smile that she honestly meant as friendly – she didn't know what had put Claudia in such a foul mood, but she could tell it was making Clive a bit antsy. 'You'd better get changed,' she added to her friend.

'Right,' he replied, grinning at her and starting toward the changing rooms. And then – 'Hey! What's this?'

'Oh,' she whirled, the conversation with Claudia having driven it straight out of her mind. 'I've got my own now – or, we've got our own,' she corrected happily. 'They've finally done one for the girls.'

'Yes, but you're the only one who'll be using it, so really it's just yours,' Claudia said, marching up to be part of the conversation too.

Was there a bit of acid in that tone? Ze wondered as she glanced at Clive, hoping he'd give her a clue. He just looked confused. 'Well,' she said, 'hopefully I won't be the last female quidditch player Hogwarts has…'

The rest of the team was emerging from the changing room, most in time to hear this last comment on Ze's part. Clive, glancing from Claudia to his friends, said in a bright tone, 'Er, Claudia's going to watch – is that alright?'

Everyone shrugged, not particularly caring: Zeke's girlfri- ex-girlfriend had used to watch training sessions, and had even brought her friends along on occasion. One Ravenclaw, likely absorbed in a book, would be much less distracting than five or six noisy Gryffindors, and so instead of answering they just went about their usual warm ups. Claudia seemed to be glaring at Clive, who was looking hopelessly lost. Sirius, sensing that there had been some sort of row, finally said, 'Sure, that'd be okay,' and gave Claudia a smile.

She brightened right up for Sirius, Ze noted darkly, watching as Claudia smiled back and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, practically preening. Oh, don't be such a- a- girl, she admonished. You're here to play quidditch, not wonder why your friend's girlfriend is giving you nasty looks – which she probably isn't in the first place. Stop being paranoid. And with that, she swung her leg over her broom, and soared into the sky.

Sirius, who had been watching her closely, had to shake himself. Clive might not have noticed the way Claudia had reacted to Ze, but he certainly had. And he wanted to tell Ze to put on her quidditch trousers too – not because she might get cold, but because concentrating on anything other than her legs was going to be impossible.

*.*.*

For the first time in all her years of school play, Ze had a nice hot shower immediately after the training session ended. Unlike Gryffindor tower, where hot water was a luxury obtained only by serious threatening of the ancient pipes, there was no shortage here, and she revelled in the clouds of steam roiling about her. The taps had been enchanted to spray lemon-scented water, and there was even a bottle of cinnamon shampoo – not the best mix of smells, Ze thought as she towelled off, but it would do. She kept her promise not to strew muddy socks about, and made sure that everything was hanging tidily in her locker before she shut it up.

Her broom she took with her, just because she didn't feel like taking a chance, and as she stepped back out into the twilight, she whistled tunelessly through her teeth. Clive was exiting the boys' side at the same moment, and Ze smiled at her luck. But when she called, 'Fancy supper?' he just turned and gave her an apologetic grimace.

'Sorry – I promised Claudia I'd eat with her, and then we'd go to the library. You don't mind, do you?'

Ah, Ze thought, so it hasn't been just me bunking off… 'Not at all,' she replied. 'I'll see you later.'

He smiled gratefully, said, 'Bye!' and hurried off to meet Claudia, who, even in silhouette and at a distance, appeared impatient.

'Ah, young love,' a voice said from behind her, and she turned to see Sirius rubbing his hand through his wet hair.

'You sound just a wee bit mocking.'

He shrugged. 'I'm not the one being dragged off to the library – I think I'm allowed.'

'…he takes for bloody ever – come on!' Rob shouted. He was in the doorway to the boys', shouting back inside.

'He's doing his hair,' Allister chuckled, slipping out under Rob's arm.

'Bollocks,' Rob said indignantly, 'he hasn't got any hair to do!' But it wasn't Zeke who replied.

'Yes I have!' James cried, pushing Rob out of the way and running a hand protectively through his electrified locks. 'And it's naturally gorgeous.'

'Unlike the rest of you,' Zeke laughed, prodding James in the back as he joined them. 'No wonder Evans thinks you're a wanker.'

'I am not a wanker!'

'Truer words were never spoken,' Sirius deadpanned, and all the boys laughed. Ze hid her own snigger, pretending she didn't get the joke, and joined in the banter as the lot of them wound their way up the hill, not a bit of awkwardness to be found.

*.*.*

'Can anyone come to watch quidditch training?'

Ze jerked in surprise and looked up from her letter to Jack to see Dorcas peering at her inquisitively. It wasn't a pleasant sensation – rather like waking up with a cat sitting on your chest, staring down at you, telepathically informing you that it's immediate breakfast, or your eyes. 'Sorry - what?'

'Quidditch training,' Dorcas repeated slowly and carefully, as to a child. 'I saw that Claudia girl watching today - can just anyone do it?'

'Well…' Ze trailed off, trying to organise her thoughts, some of which were still on the letter to Jack, and some of which were still on Dorcas-as-Psychotic-Cat. 'I suppose so – I mean, it's usually-' she started to say friends, but realised that wasn't correct. It was mostly girlfriends, come to watch their chap get all sweaty and gross, or opponents, come to apply pressure and get an idea of what they were facing. 'Okay, so you want to come and watch Rob, yeah?' she asked, cutting to the heart of the matter.

'Right,' Dorcas agreed, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. They were in the common room, and Ze had been sitting in solitary contentment on the window seat. Now Dorcas was crouched next to her, and though people weren't staring yet, it wouldn't take them long if it looked as though something interesting was happening.

Ze wracked her brain for a way to explain this without coming off a complete idiot. 'We've got to pretend we're doing something normal,' she said in a, well, normal tone of voice. 'Here, pass us that transfiguration book – perfect. Now, you'll just pretend you're helping me with this essay…' she flipped her letter to Jack over and pretended to scribble something. 'And you'll talk in a completely normal way, and no one will think that what you're saying is worth hearing, so they won't bother to listen to it, yeah?'

Dorcas stared up at her with what Ze momentarily mistook for horrific pain. But, just as she was about to ask if Dorcas were having kidney failure or something, the other girl said, 'You're brilliant at this, aren't you?' in a wondering sort of voice.

'Er…sure. Now, you want to come to quidditch to watch Rob?'

Dorcas nodded, a light glowing in her eyes. 'Yes – I was thinking that perhaps some sort of sport mishap – no?' she broke off, having caught the look on Ze's face. 'Too much, you think?'

'Well, it's not exactly a joking matter,' Ze said hastily. 'People can be badly hurt in sport accidents, you know? And if something happens to Rob, then the rest of the side's screwed too, 'cos we work as a whole, right?'

'Mmmm,' Dorcas murmured. 'So maybe something else?'

'Definitely something else,' Ze affirmed. Dorcas sat back, chewing on her lip. To anyone passing by, it looked as though she were mulling over some deep and difficult academic quandary. And, academics aside, Ze was beginning to think that deep and difficult would just about describe Dorcas's reasons for plotting revenge. Almost hesitantly, she asked, 'so, why, exactly, are you doing this?'

Dorcas snapped back to the present, and gave Ze a look that was much more, well, normal than a usual Dorcas expression – that is to say, it had a great deal of seventeen year old girl in it. And, almost hesitantly, she replied: 'It's…complicated.'

'I thought it was just because he snogged you – you know, at the weekend, as a dare,' Ze explained gently. 'But maybe…maybe there's something else?'

Dorcas nodded, looking down and picking at the hem of her skirt. 'I – well, I – I used to fancy him.' Her gaze darted up to Ze's, wide and worried. 'But you can't tell anyone!'

'No, of course not,' Ze assured, thinking , you had to go and ask, didn't you? 'And really, I mean, it's not that that's a bad thing. Rob's a….decent guy.'

'He's an insensitive bastard,' Dorcas snarled.

'Well, yes, but he is an adolescent male.'

Ze had hoped to lighten the conversation, but Dorcas wasn't having it. 'I thought you would understand – you know, about being humiliated in front of everyone. But you're not even angry with them, are you? I saw you tonight at dinner, laughing like nothing had happened!'

For a moment, Ze felt deeply, achingly sorry for Dorcas: she had been looking for someone to share her sense of complete alienation and while Ze could relate, she didn't feel precisely the same. 'Dorcas, I don't know how to explain this properly, but…well, they didn't intentionally do anything to me. Alright, Rob did put on that ridiculous bra at breakfast on Saturday, and that was pretty awful, but he was just having a laugh – a bit of a hurtful, humiliating laugh, but that's his way. And yes, I think he needs to be taught a lesson for it. But what happened yesterday morning had nothing to do with Sirius and James playing a joke on me – that was my own fault for loaning them something they needed.'

Dorcas stared at her, wide-eyed. 'You-you mean you really did loan them your panties?'

'Yeah,' Ze sighed. 'I'm a right stupid cow. But Sirius and James have both apologised,' she added, grinning as she remembered James's halting, horrified attempt just after dinner, 'and everything's fine there. So I'm willing to help you with Rob – in fact, I'd very much like to – but I'm not really sure how to go about it. And I honestly think that whatever you do needs to be something that he'll definitely understand is you, not just some silly prank that'll embarrass him in public. You know how he is – any attention is good attention, and even if he ends up looking like an utter ass, he'll still be grinning like it was his idea.'

Dorcas nodded slowly, soaking this all in. Then she turned and gave another of those long, curious looks of hers, and nodded. 'Right. You're not what I expected,' she added, following it up with, 'and I've got some planning to do.'

And with that non-sequitur, she stood and walked away, the lavender bow bouncing jauntily atop her head. Ze watched her go, and then flipped her letter to Jack back over, picking up her quill and continuing with sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction…

A/N - this chapter is edited, so sorry for all who were hoping for a new one when the story popped up again on the recently added page...another chapter will be added soon, i promise

enormous thanks to all who've reviewed - if you haven't, please leave one and tell me what you think! (or, if you're reading for the second time, and see something new, leave another :)


	18. Unravelling at The Seams

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 18: Unravelling At The Seams

Remus Lupin was falling apart.

Of course, he wasn't eager to let anyone know it, and to the world at large he appeared to be his normal quiet, thoughtful self: sandy hair neatly combed, tie knotted, and prefect badge in place. In fact, his exterior façade was so perfectly maintained that, had anyone bothered to peer beneath his trouser cuffs, they would have seen that even his socks matched. But inside…inside he was on fire. His thoughts were scattered, his hands were clammy – his entire body jittered with nervous energy, energy that was boiling and steaming out of every pore. And Remus knew why. Sitting dazedly at breakfast, mouth slack and eyes unfocussed, he tried desperately to bring things back to a manageable level – that is to say, a low simmer. But there was no doing it: he was doomed to suffer through as a roiling, stewing cauldron of – of - hormones.

Not that the sensation was new. He was, after all, an adolescent boy, which meant that hypersensitive awareness of the physical and frequent rushes of blood to places other than his brain were quite normal. It was just that he could usually count on doing something about the feeling, sooner or later. But unfortunately for his poor, beleaguered shell of a body, that was no longer the case – thanks to that bloody bet, he was doomed to pitiful, torturous suffering. Once upon a time, a girl sauntering past in a short skirt had been an enjoyable experience. Now, it just elicited a pathetic whimper of unfulfilled longing.

How? he moaned piteously to himself. How did this happen? And why? That was really the tear-jerking question: why? Why the hell had he ever thought this was a good idea? This wasn't a test of virtue – it wasn't even a noble and self-sacrificing exploration of psychology. It was bloody torture. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. And he certainly couldn't follow anything female up the stairs without nearly breaking his neck.

At least, he thought in a desperate attempt to cheer himself up, you're not alone. Looking around the breakfast table he was greeted by faces as slack and miserable as his own. True, the dismal expressions and the general air of agonised martyrdom might have stemmed from the fact that it was a bright, cheery morning and not even gone nine o'clock, but Remus preferred to think otherwise. Given that Sirius and James both looked like death on toast, and that Peter was positively shuddering over his muesli, he was probably right.

The only person who looked even vaguely capable of human interaction was Ze, who was munching quite happily on a muffin, her eyes skimming through a long letter that had just been delivered in the post. As Remus watched she felt about, without taking her eyes off her letter, and found her knife, which she used to spread marmalade on the other half of her muffin. A glob of thick orange sweetness stuck to her finger as she returned the knife to her plate, and without so much as glancing up she brought her hand to her mouth and licked the marmalade off in a gesture that was unconsciously alluring. Despite the fact that Remus had never felt any attraction towards her before, the sight of her licking jam off her long, slender fingers had him squirming in his seat. A muffled groan from his left had him turning to see Sirius, eyes half closed, staring helplessly at Ze's hand, which was hovering just before her mouth as she smiled secretly over something she was reading.

With a not-so-muffled curse, Sirius dropped his head to the table and began to thump it rhythmically against the wood.

All lustful thoughts drained away as Remus wondered, not for the first time, just what was brewing between Sirius and Ze – and just how aware they were of it. The past few days, which would never go down as shining examples of normalcy, had been especially telling, considering Ze and Sirius had rarely been apart. But then, that could just be coincidence - Remus couldn't be precisely sure, in part because he didn't know Ze very well, and in part because Sirius could be very private when it came to these things. After all, it had taken him months to admit to his fellow Marauders that he had even mildly fancied Grace. And speaking of Our Lady of Pain…curiously, Remus flicked his eyes up the table to Grace, not surprised to find her eyes glued on Sirius, their pretty blue depths narrowed down to slits as she observed the way he was watching Ze. For her part, Ze didn't seem even vaguely aware that anyone was taking an interest in her, prurient or otherwise. This could be bad… was all Remus's over-stimulated brain could come up with.

And then Lydia Hearne strutted past, her emphatically pneumatic chest exquisitely moulded by her school jumper, and there wasn't room for anything else in his head.

*.*.*.*.*

'Mister Pettigrew! If do not stop tapping your foot this instant I will stop it for you!'

Peter was sat frozen in his desk in the Transfiguration classroom, his eyes as round as crystal balls, his entire body quivering. Around him, the class was torn between commiseration (she shouted at everyone at some point) and relief (the tapping had bloody obnoxious), as it shifted nervously, eyes determinedly not looking at the apoplectic professor.

'Thank you,' McGonagall said sharply, gripping her pointer and turning back to the blackboard. 'It is essential that you be attentive to the feet, as they do tend to resist transformation…'

'That was close,' James whispered to Sirius, who was boring a hole through his parchment into the desk with his quill, his eyes fixed sightlessly on Kate Foster's extremely short skirt. 'I thought she was going to tear his head off.'

'Mmm,' was Sirius's only reply.

For a moment, James was silent. And then, two desks ahead, a curtain of long red hair shimmered as it was tossed lightly out of the way. Letting out a muffled groan, James sank lower in his seat and stared at the ceiling, muttering, 'butterflies….clouds…bunnies – oh piss, not bunnies –'

Sirius, still not looking up, nodded in commiseration: he completely understood. After all, he'd got out of bed this morning in a veritable cloud of assaulting pheromones. It was like being thirteen all over again, waking up one morning and realising that girls are different in a wonderful, shifting, bouncing, curving, shimmying way. Not that he'd forgotten that, of course – it was just that this morning that knowledge had hit him like the proverbial ton of bricks. Everywhere he looked were delicious female bodies, tinkling female laughter, intoxicating female purfume…

Can you hear yourself? his subconscious demanded. You sound like bloody – bloody I don't even know who! Tinkling laughter and intoxicating perfume my arse – how bleeding poncy can you get? Sirius winced, not sure he even wanted to attempt that one – poncy indeed. But it didn't alter the truth, which was that the girls of Hogwarts had suddenly got much more…noticeable. Had someone cast a mass Beautifying Charm, or was it just the old "you don't want it 'til you can't have it" adage at work? Because he couldn't be sure, but he'd thought that even Dorcas had looked marginally less like a flounder….

Of course, it if had just been noticing that was the problem, he would have been fine. After all, no one had ever died from looking at a pretty girl…actually, hm…never mind. But really, did it have to be this – this – this interactive? Did he have to be painfully, excruciatingly aware of every single girl in a ten metre radius? And then an image of Ze, head bent over her letter, licking marmalade off of her fingers flitted through his head….

'Uuuuuggghhh,' he groaned, shuffling down in his seat, staring at the ceiling and joining James in not thinking about bunnies.

*.*.*.*

From her seat beside Dorcas, Ze watched as James, Remus, and finally Sirius cast beseeching gazes up at the ceiling, their faces drawn and pale. Had they eaten something funny at breakfast? Had they had a row? Was there just something really fascinating on the ceiling? She hazarded a glance up to see that there was nothing there but the usual assortment of ribbed vaults and cobwebs. Curious…very curiou-

'Pssst!'

'Opmh!' Ze clutched at her side, wondering if Dorcas had actually managed to puncture her lung, or just break a few ribs. 'Bloody hell,' she hissed to her desk companion. 'What've you done, got an Iron Maiden manicure?' Dorcas tipped her head at the scrap of parchment she'd nudged to the centre of the desk, indicating that Ze should read it. Massaging her aching side, Ze grumbled, 'All right, all right – just don't poke me again, yeah?'

Flipping the parchment open she read Meet at eight tonight in common room to plan?

She started to scribble back "sure", then recalled that it was Friday, and winced. Sorry, she scribbled, I can't – I've got detention tonight. You know, for the knickers-breakfast thing. Don't know how long it'll run, but probably late.

With that she nudged the parchment back, not quite able to believe that she was passing notes in class with Dorcas, who was normally so absorbed in the lesson her nose was bumping the blackboard. But the bespectacled girl didn't seem to be so attentive today – she was reading Ze's reply and frowning. After a moment she added something else to the note, and pushed it back. Tomorrow? was scrawled along the bottom of the page.

It's Hogsmeade in the morning, Ze pointed out, and we'll look dead suspicious if we sit in the pub and plan. I've got detention again in the evening too. Sunday?

Dorcas frowned as she read this, plainly displeased. But, sensing that she wasn't going to get anything better, she shrugged. Sunday, she scribbled onto the parchment, nodding to Ze to show she understood. And then, as though they hadn't just been planning a secret rendezvous, she turned back to the front of the room and began scribbling down McGonagall's lesson, word for word.

Weird, Ze mumbled to herself, scribbling the word down on her own parchment as she leant back in her seat, staring at the blackboard where McGonagall was enumerating the benefits of knowing how to transfigure at casserole dish into a kangaroo. But, after the words "storage pouch", she completely tuned out, deciding that the chances of this being on the exam were slim to nil. Instead, she turned her thoughts to the letter she'd received that morning. Quite a long, involved letter, actually.

When the owl had swooped down, neatly divebombing her and ruining her first attempt at toast and jam, she'd expected a note from her parents – after all, Jack didn't have an owl. She'd been half right. There was a note from her parents (How are you? We're lovely. The neighbors have got a new dog – looks like a tennis ball mated with a porcupine, and has a bark that could shatter glass. I've had to hide the rat poison from your father…), but it was wrapped around a much thicker bundle of paper, which turned out to be a very long letter from Jacko.

Tired of waiting for her to write to him - you've been AGES - he'd taken the initiative and posted a ramble home with instructions for her parents to forward it on. Likely you've forgot all about me, the letter had started, but I'm that tall fellow everyone thinks you're going to marry. It had been a rollicking start to what must have been one of the strangest letters she'd ever received from him. Yes, things were difficult, yes he was wishing he'd never taken on four subjects, but… As per usual with Jacko, you had to read the entire thing through three times before the comments, which ran together with about as much coherence as a Boy George love ballad, started to make any sense. That was why it had taken her until the end of breakfast to realise that he was telling her he'd met a girl.

Ze had finally picked it out, nestled between a paragraph about a friend who'd got his hand stuck down a toilet and what was either Jack's attempt at modern art, or just a large mustard stain. But it was definitely in reference to a girl – and not just a friend. She was called Sophie, she came from Newcastle, and from what Ze could deduce from Jacko's painfully elliptical scribbles, she was very clever, played sport, and had nice eyebrows. The last bit had made her shrug – boys really were from a different planet after all.

Now, sitting in Transfiguration, having had a bit of time to think the situation over, Ze decided she really shouldn't be so surprised. After all, they were seventeen, almost eighteen - most people had at least been on a date or two by now. And it wasn't as though Jack were obnoxious or hideously unattractive. Quite the opposite, actually. Nice, clever, good-looking, liked football…he was any girl's dream. But Ze couldn't help feeling just a bit despondent – after all, her best mate seemed well on his way to being arse over ears in love. With someone who had nice eyebrows. What the hell did that –

'Mr Potter!'

Ze jerked at the sound of McGonagall calling James's name – and obviously not for the first time. She glanced over to see James jumping as well, his face ashen and his eyes wild. Ze frowned, knowing that this was more than an I've-been-drawing-funny-cartoons-of-McGonagall-in- my-notes-and-she's-finally-cottoned-on frightened face – this was definitely a gone-completely-mental face.

McGonagall, however, didn't seem to notice. 'What is the –'

'Bunnies!' James shouted. And then promptly sank low in his seat, and in a very low voice muttered, 'oh fuck.'

*.*.*.*

'Bunnies?' Ze asked incredulously as they made their way out of the Transfiguration classroom, getting quite a few odd looks from their fellow students. 'I mean, bunnies - what were you thinking?'

'Bunnies,' James repeated morosely, and Ze wasn't sure if this was an answer to her question, or just a dazed reliving of the horror.

She turned to the others for help, fully expecting a wry comment, or in the very least a commiserating smile. All she got were blank stares, and in Peter's case, what looked like a bit of a facial twitch. Frowning, she decided some group interrogation was in order. 'Are you feeling alright?'

'Uuuughg,' they said as one.

'What?'

'Mmmm – fine,' Sirius mumbled.

Ze glanced back and forth from face to face. Yes, that was definitely a twitch around the eye on Peter, and Remus looked as though he hadn't slept a wink. 'You haven't been experimenting with Mega-mutant Hex Wars again, have you?' she asked suspiciously. This elicited another chorus of grunts, but she was fairly sure they were negative rather than affirmative this time. 'Good.'

She was content to walk in silence, because that seemed all they were capable of at the moment. After a bit she actually felt as though she were walking on her own, they were so silent. And then she realised that she was walking on her own. She came to a halt and turned to look over her shoulder, spotting them half a corridor behind her, just standing, their eyes fixed and staring. She glanced from side to side: no one else was around. Slowly she turned to face them.

'Alright, what's going on?'

'Mmghghg'

'That is not an answer!' she snapped. 'You're acting really weird.'

Absolutely no response to this.

'What are you staring at?' she cried, almost throwing her hands up to vent her frustration. 'There's nothing here,' she said, turning a circle to demonstrate. 'Nobody but us – and we're about to be late.'

'Mmmm.'

'Will you stop grunting like that and tell me what is going on!'

'Nghghg.'

This time she couldn't stop her hands from flying up. 'Ahhhhh! Speak!'

By the time they trooped into Herbology, Ze was ready to rip her hair out – or in the very least, strangle one of her friends. If she wasn't driven mad by dark thanks to the incessant tapping, humming, shuffling and coin-in-pocket jingling, she was fairly sure the complete lack of apparent mental function would do it. Even Remus was showing symptoms of Weird Bloke Syndrome – he'd actually been called down for not paying attention in class, and had stuttered when he'd finally answered the professor's question. In anyone else this would seem typical Friday behaviour, but in Remus it was equivalent to standing on the desk, ripping off his clothes, and dancing the cancan.

Banish the mental image – banish!

Well actually, banish the cancan…

Alright, complete halt to that train of thought – Remus was absolutely lovely, but what he looked like sans trousers was none of her business. And he probably looked better in her imagination, anyway, so there. Now Sirius –

STOP!

Absolutely not what she needed to be thinking about, even if it would distract her from the reek of freshly delivered manure pervading the greenhouse. After all, thinking about Sirius ripping his clothes off was just…ridiculous…because he would never do it, not even if there was a dare involved….hmm…well perhaps if he were absolutely pissed, and she meant really, really arsed up, he might just –

'What're you thinking so hard about?'

'Nothing!' Ze practically shouted, whipping her head around to see if, as the punchline to some cosmic joke, her thoughts were being broadcasted in a Technicolour bubble above her head. 'Nothing,' she repeated, having decided that her secrets were safe. 'Ummm…' she finally glanced in front of her to see a very bemused looking boy. It took another minute to put face and memory together, and discover that she was staring at Colin Cross's impossibly infectious grin. 'Oh, hey,' she said, rapidly shaking her head. 'Sorry, I was having a stupid moment – how are you?'

'Glad you remembered me – wasn't sure you were going to for a minute there,' he replied, his grin telling her it was a joke. 'I was almost afraid I'd have to offer to let you run me over again.'

She laughed a touch nervously and glanced around to see that the rest of the class was chatting, waiting for the lesson to begin. A few people seemed to be noticing that she and Colin were talking, but then he'd strayed from the Hufflepuff side of the table to the Gryffindor, so that was expected. 'I promise not to do my juggernaut impression again unless you deserve it – you're not too bruised up, I hope?'

'I twinged a bit yesterday morning, but I'm fine,' he assured her as the teacher came bustling through the doors to the greenhouse, grinning absently.

'Did I ever apologise properly for that? Because if I didn't –'

'Nothing to worry about,' he grinned. 'I'm fine. Er, what's up with this lot?' he asked, nodding to the Gryffindor boys with a very strange expression. 'They look a bit…peaky.'

Ze turned to see if any of them had gone a funny colour or something, but they were just staring across the room to where Natalie Pierce was bending over to retrieve something she'd dropped. 'No idea – they've been like that all day,' Ze confided.

Colin grinned. 'Brilliant – then they won't mind if I steal you as a partner for the lesson.'

Ze glanced back around at her friends, standing like a pack of zombies, mouths gaping, eyes glassy. She was suddenly very desperate for conversation that wasn't half-comprised of grunts. 'Please, god, save me now.'

*.*.*.*.*

'Laters,' Ze called to Colin, who waved back and joined his friends, grinning at her over his shoulder as he went. As always, his smile made Ze smile back, and she turned to her own mates thinking about how much fun the lesson had been. Not that she didn't generally enjoy Herbology – it was just that today she would have spent it sandwiched between four people whose brains had apparently been swapped with the cranial matter of mentally sub-par prawns. And speaking of the devils –

'I need your help,' Sirius said, his hands very firmly landing on her shoulders, his eyes boring into hers.

She stared, gobsmacked.

'What?' he asked peevishly.

'You. Talking. Words. Intelligible words. Bloody amazing.'

He stared at her, confused. 'Huh? Oh never mind – I really, really, sort of desperately need your help.''Okay then,' she shrugged, deciding that now was not the time to brown him off by telling him he'd been acting completely mad. 'With what?'

'You go running every day, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'So you're going to today, yeah?'

'Yeah, but –'

'I want to come with you.'

She arched a brow. 'You want to come with me? Running?'

He nodded, biting his lip as though he were worried she'd say no. Ze tilted her head to the side, carefully taking stock of him. His hair stood off his head in whirls and tufts, a feat of style that's usually gained only by seven or eight solid and dedicated hours of contact with a pillow. His cuffs weren't buttoned, his shirttails were out, and his tie sported the sort of knot you discover when you try to unwind the hosepipe from the rest of the gardening tools. There was a dark shadow of stubble on his jaw and shadows under his eyes, and his lower lip was puffy and red from where he'd been chewing on it – clearly for some time.

'You look awful,' she finally told him, deciding that honesty, if not the best way, was certainly the easiest.

'Yeah,' he agreed rapidly, 'and I feel worse. So can I come or not?'

'Well, er, sure. But why? I mean, why do you suddenly want to take up running?' Ze, though admittedly addicted to the sport, knew that it was hardly what anyone else considered "fun".

'I need to take my mind off things,' was they cryptic response.

'I think it's a Penseive you want then.'

'No. I just – look, I remember you saying once that if you didn't run you'd go mad, because it was the only time in the day where you could forget about everything, just let your mind go walkabout and the rest of you have a break. And I could use that. I could really, really use that. And being physically exhausted wouldn't come amiss, either.' As he spoke he combed his fingers through his hair, standing it even further on end, lending to the general air of "any minute now I'm going to start hopping around and squawking like a chicken".

Ze scrubbed her hand through her own hair and sighed. 'If there's something bothering you, you can talk to me about it. It's not like I wouldn't listen,' she added.

Sirius looked almost pained. 'I – it's nothing, really, not anything important anyway, so…'

'Sirius, last night you went to bed as normal as you've ever been. This morning you wake up and it's like you've spent one too many lessons in the Divination room. You can't tell me nothing's wrong.'

'Alright,' he finally mumbled, staring at his feet. 'I'll agree that I can't tell you nothing's wrong. But, I can't tell you what is wrong, see? Its one of those paradox things. I just need your help. And I promise, I'll be back to normal – I swear.'

She eyed him, completely at a loss. All day he'd been staring and grunting and doing a first-rate impersonation of a troll trying to figure out the size of its club. And now, suddenly, he needed her help – which was just going running – and couldn't tell her why. So that he could be "back to normal". What the bloody hell was "normal" for Sirius, anyway? Saving the day and shuffling his feet? And why did it even matter? I desperately need to go running, she thought with a mental groan. 'You can come running with me any time you like Sirius,' she sighed. 'And if you ever get released from your quietus, you can tell me about that, too.'

'Thank you,' he said fervently, sweeping her into a tight hug and immediately leaping away from her as though she had the plague before she could even properly adjust to the sensation. 'Thank you thank you thank you – you've saved my life. So, when do we meet?'

'Um, well, I guess we'll have to go now,' she shrugged, completely confused by his behaviour.

'Now?'

'Well, yeah – never a good idea to eat and then run. Always run and then eat, first lesson. Well, first right after "tie your shoes". Anyway, we'll have to go now, and then clean up and have supper, because after that we've got detention.'

'Detention?'

'You auditioning for the part of the echo? Yes, detention – remember, that pesky little thing we were assigned after a certain bit of my clothing made an appearance in the Great Hall at an hour far too early for the head's liking? Friday – that would be today – report to the caretaker for our tasks…ringing any bells?'

'Detention,' he repeated almost reverently. 'This really couldn't be better.'

'Better?' Ze managed to choke out. 'How could this not be better? Perhaps a nice dose of torture on the rack, or maybe a bout of the Bubonic plague could sweep through – that do the trick?'

Sirius gave her an aggrieved look, as though he'd been making perfect sense and she was refusing to understand. 'I just need a good night's sleep, that's all – and I've been a bit…distracted today. Might happen tonight, too. So I want to be as tired as possible when I finally get to bed. So yeah, detention – manual labour, remember? – is a good thing.'

Any other time she would have pointed out the simplicity of a basic sleeping draught. Today, however, Sirius looked more than a little mad, and she decided to save her breath. 'Okay. So detention is a good thing. Got it. Now, you still want to go running.'

'Of course. Um…what do I wear?'

'Something that won't chafe. Oh, and make sure you've got proper shoes. I'll meet you in the courtyard for some stretches in ten minutes?'

'Right,' he agreed, and Ze turned to continue on. But Sirius, his brain having stalled at the "what to wear" question, stopped her. 'Ze?'

'Hm?'

He licked his lips, wondering how to tell her that he really, definitely, not even a little bit, couldn't take the distraction today. 'Er, have you got anything…longer than those running shorts?'

A/N - yes, i know it's very short, and that "not mich happens" but the next two chapters are long, and this didn't fit properly, so had to stand on its own. there are little bits of detail that it will be important to have though, so be prepared! there will be a quiz...or not. just another chapter. and another after that...

thanks to all who've read and reviewed - i read each and every one, so please leave another!


	19. By Now, You Should Know Better

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 19: By Now, You Should Know Better

'Just a bit further – almost there – yes – just a bit more – a bit more – yes! – there! Perfect!' Sirius let out a long, tortured groan, and Ze's hand gave him an encouraging pat on the back.

'Why the bloody hell do I have to touch my toes?' he groused.

'It's called stretching,' Ze replied, blithely bending forward and wrapping her hands nimbly round her own insteps. 'Very important, keeps things from getting pulled and torn and all that. Always stretch before you run – remember that, yeah?'

Sirius was having trouble remembering his own name, but that might have been because she'd stood back up and was bending one of those long legs practically up over her shoulder. So flexible… he thought helplessly, suppressing a whimper.

'You ready?' Ze asked brightly, a faint flush colouring her cheeks, her eyes glittering with what he could only assume was expectation.

'Yes,' Sirius managed to grind out. 'Whenever you are.'

If she thought there was any deeper meaning to that statement, it didn't show in her face. Instead, she grinned, said, 'Right, let's go then,' and turned round to the path leading out of the courtyard, her legs moving in an easy, loping jog. Sirius, already wiping sweat from his brow, followed.

At first Sirius felt a bit foolish about the fact that he was running, especially when they passed a group of Hufflepuff girls who all giggled as he jogged by, trying to find his stride. He had an image of himself, hair flapping about, arms and legs swinging, as he followed in Ze's footsteps. He must look a complete idiot. Brilliant. But Ze's path soon diverged from the main one leading toward the Care of Magical Creatures clearing, and quite suddenly the castle and everyone in it were gone from sight, leaving them in a world where damp leaves rustled underfoot and trees showed the first sign of autumn's chill. The air was cool and crisp, surging in and out of his lungs, and his body seemed to take on a rhythm that was somehow right, churning along in perfect coordination, ceasing the need for his conscious mind to be in charge and leaving all the important decisions to those deeper faculties, bred right into the muscle and bone. Ahead he could hear Ze's feet whispering against the leaves, a beat as gentle and constant as rain on a roof, but even her presence had receded from the forefront of his mind. It was as though the world had fallen away, leaving nothing but his body and this physically complex yet gloriously simple stretch and pull.

Sirius loved running.

As long as he kept putting one foot in front of the other, just like this, absolutely nothing could touch him. His lungs would cycle air, his heart would pump blood, and this magnificent machine called a body that he took for granted every day would carry him through. Why hadn't he discovered this earlier? It was amazing, life changing, a truly genius idea. Really, whoever had thought this up had been bloody brilliant. After another ten minutes his joy still hadn't diminished – in fact, he was feeling positively re-born. Well, alright, so his legs were beginning to burn a bit, but that just made it more real. After all, when you decided to run up a hillside you had to expect a bit of discomfort, even if – ouch! – you were having a wonderful – bloody hell, he hadn't known he had muscles there – time and discovering new – Merlin Morgana and Circe, he could barely fucking breathe – things…about…yourse- oh, sod this.

Sirius hated running.

He couldn't breathe without some internal goblin gleefully shoving a knife between his ribs, and his legs felt like so much jelly, and he absolutely – could – not – keep – going-

But Ze was. In fact, she seemed to be moving faster. Sirius felt his eyes narrow even as his lungs seized and his legs threatened mutiny beneath him. There was no possible way he was letting her leave him behind. Staggering and stumbling, using his hands for balance and his knees as protective bumpers, he somehow clawed his way up the hill. At the top he paused for a moment, the world spinning around him, no longer an inspiration of crisp air and delightful scenery, but a sinister maze full of sharp rocks and stinging nettles. Ze had continued on, her pace steady and sure, eating up the ground as though she did this every day. With a shuddering wheeze, Sirius realised that she did do this every day. And it was bloody well putting him to shame. Weaving back and forth, feeling as though he'd just fought a dragon, not a hillside, he staggered after her in a pace that was more of a speedy wobble than a run.

'Almost halfway!' she called over her shoulder, not seeming to notice that he was close to death.

'Look on the bright side,' he mumbled to himself, 'if you keep going with your eyes closed, you might just go off a cliff.' And, with that encouraging advice, he doggedly shuffled after her, praying for it to end.

*.*.*

A quarter of an hour later Ze drew to a halt in the courtyard, counted her pulse, and smiled as she felt the familiar thrum of excitement gentle into satiated lassitude. Her body felt faintly impatient, taking longer than usual to come down, and Ze decided that this was because she hadn't exerted herself overmuch. But then, pushing Sirius would result in major cramps and probably put him off the whole exercise for life. And she didn't want to do that…

A horrific panting filled the air, and she turned with a smile to greet him as he shuddered to a halt, bending in half to put his hands on his knees. 'I am - wheeze - never - pant - doing that - gasp - again.'

''Course you are,' she grinned. 'You loved it.'

His head snapped up and he sent her a baleful glare from beneath the fringe that was hanging, sweat-soaked and limp, over his eyes. Something breathlessly garbled came out of his mouth, and she translated it roughly into "over my dead body".

'Ah, your body's not dead,' she said cheerfully, thumping him on the back. 'You're just getting warmed up. By next week you'll be ready to go the whole distance.'

This time the look was one of confused trepidation, and she could practically hear him thinking "whole distance". 'You mean,' he licked his lips, still panting shallowly, 'this isn't…the whole…?'

'S'bout half,' Ze shrugged, bending forward for her cool off stretches. 'The longer you run, the more endurance you build, and pretty soon three kilometres just isn't enough. But you're well fit – you just need your lungs to catch up with your muscles, and that happens fast.'

He let out a strangled groan. 'You make it sound…like an…addiction,' he got out between breaths.

'It is,' she agreed cheerfully. 'Best vice I've got. Start your stretches before your muscles seize up.'

'What?'

'Stretches,' she repeated clearly. 'You've got to do them again or you'll have cramps worse than a woman pregnant with a football side. Come on.'

'No,' he moaned, sinking down to his heels in a crouch that seemed as much due to exhaustion as the threat of further stretching.

'Oh don't be such a twat,' she chided. 'It's just touching your toes.'

He let out a groan that wouldn't have been out of place in a death chamber.

'Sirius,' she said, infusing her tone with a mixture of her mother and Lily. He jerked slightly and slanted one eye at her, looking almost afraid. 'Stretches. Now.'

With a whimper he stood and performed a basic lunge, wincing and pouting so melodramatically that Ze couldn't help but laugh. 'What?' he asked petulantly.

'You,' she replied, doing her final quadriceps-pull. 'You look like a stroppy little boy.'

'Do not,' he mumbled, imitating her pose. This just made her laugh again. 'Can't you see I'm miserable here?' he cried.

'Yeah,' she sniggered, cocking a brow at him. 'But you got what you wanted, didn't you?'

'I didn't want to feel like I'd been trampled by a herd of centaurs,' he snapped.

'No, but whatever it was you wanted to forget about, you've forgot.'

And with that, she turned and headed back toward the castle door. Sirius had no choice but to follow – after all, she was dead right.

*.*.*.*

A half hour later Sirius was in a much better frame of mind. Of course, he'd had a hot shower and was wearing clean clothes, but he decided that didn't have much to do with it. It was really the fact that he wasn't jogging anymore. He was walking – a healthy, normal, sane pace, walking. Perfectly suitable for getting around, and much safer than sprinting about, twisting ankles and gasping for air. After all, running was really just a defence mechanism left over from the days when woolly mammoths went around terrorising humans and gobbling up…whatever it was woolly mammoths gobbled up. Now that there weren't massive hairy beasts chasing them down (well, most of the time) the human race didn't have much need for running. People had evolved past it – or, some of them had. Ze must just be a bit less genetically advanced than he in that respect. Not that there was anything wrong with that – he just wouldn't be joining her again. Except that the beginning bit had been rather nice…the part right up until he'd been on the edge of death. Before that it had been almost- almost divine.

'Starting to realise you liked it, aren't you?'

'No!' Sirius said, turning to see Ze, damp-haired and obviously fresh from the shower, grinning at him. 'I was just, er, thinking about supper.'

'Liar,' she said companionably, ambling to his side. 'You haven't seen Clive, have you?'

This completely threw Sirius off. Clive? Well, of course he'd seen Clive…hadn't he? After all, they lived in the same room, brushed their teeth at the same sink, pis- well, one got the point. But as he rummaged through his brain, trying to think of the last time he'd seen Clive, he kept coming back to quidditch training. 'I, well, I actually don't think I've seen him since last night,' Sirius said blankly. 'Which is a bit…'

'Odd?' Ze suggested. 'Yeah, I know. I was washing my hair and all of a sudden I realised that I haven't seen him since training.'

'She came to watch again, didn't she?' Sirius asked, and Ze had no trouble identifying who "she" was.'

'Yeah, Claudia was there. They went off together after, I think. But you didn't see him this morning?'

Sirius snorted. 'We don't have a song and dance routine while we brush our teeth you know – s'not like we'd notice he was gone when it came time for his solo bit and no one was singing.'

Ze chose to ignore this bit of frankly (in Sirius's opinion) witty repartee. 'I know,' she sighed. 'It's just a bit weird, him disappearing. I feel like I haven't properly seen him in ages.'

Sirius fought a grimace: the rest of them had been a bit too, er, preoccupied to notice, but Clive was Zazzer's best friend, and she'd been going through a lot lately – no doubt she was missing him awfully. But then, she hadn't seemed to be pining for Clive – in fact, she'd seemed quite content to work things through with, well…him. And that thought gave Sirius an odd feeling of satisfaction that bordered closely on smugness, as though he'd gotten something quite desirable that no one else had –

'OI!'

'Mm?' he said, jerking back to the present and realising that there was a funny little smile on his face.

'I said come on – if we don't eat we'll be out of time. Don't know about you, but I don't fancy having to stay after because I was late for scrubbing bed pans,' Ze grumbled, turning and making for the portrait hole.

Sirius's brows arched at this rapid change of subject: it seemed that the business with Clive wasn't weighing that heavily on her mind. Trying not to feel pleased with that thought, Sirius followed her down to the food.

*.*.*.*.*

'Clive?' James asked blankly, running his hands uneasily through his hair and tapping his foot so rapidly against the floor that the entire bench vibrated from the movement. 'Haven't seen him.'

'Okay,' Ze said slowly, frankly worried about how, well, off James looked. Almost as desperately distracted as Sirius had been prior to their run – or perhaps even worse. 'Um, thanks…' She turned to Sirius, who had been the one to ask if any of the others had seen Clive, and gave him a significant look, tipping her head at James. What's with him? she mouthed.

Sirius, who had just shoved the better part of a turkey into his mouth, did some inventive facial shifting and attempted an expression of innocent confusion. He ended looking like a stoat with indigestion, and Ze gave up. She'd have a chance to question James subtly during their detention anyway, so she might as well concentrate on the food.

But it turned out that she wasn't quite right about having James at her mercy. She, Sirius, and the alarmingly jumpy James walked together to the allotted meeting point, just at the top of the main stairs, where Wythe was waiting, looking like his usual slimy self beneath a sneer of deepest bitterness. Once the requisite glowers had been exchanged and Wythe was ignoring them properly, Ze assumed they wouldn't have long to wait before the caretaker's nasty assistant, the greasy Mr Filch, would arrive to gleefully lead them to their task. But, as the assigned hour came and went Ze decided that, whatever qualifications were required to assist the caretaker and resident torture artist of Hogwarts, punctuality didn't seem to be one of them.

After ten minutes of discussing the Wasps' chance in their match against the Cannons, with frequent repetitions of comments for James's inattentive benefit, Ze was beginning to wonder if they might not be able to get off the entire thing. But, just as hope was beginning to flourish, a scent – no, an odour – no, a stench assailed her. The sort of smell that doesn't just give pause or elicit a wince, but the sort that forms a wall to smash you right in the face, cramming up your nose and down your throat and probably even in your ears.

'Bloody hell,' she gasped, gagging. 'What is that?'

Sirius and James turned horrified stares on one another, their faces going uniformly white, their eyes widening to tea saucer dimensions. 'Popsy,' they chorused in a terrified whisper.

'Hide!' Sirius hissed, at exactly the same moment James whimpered and cried, 'Run!'

Then, neither waiting to see what she and Wythe would do, the two of them jerked into movement, slammed into one another, rebounded and took off in opposite directions like characters in a ridiculous cartoon. James scrambled over the balustrade and began to climb one of the large columns supporting a nearby arch, while Sirius launched himself onto a statue plinth and tried to hide as much of himself as possible behind the likeness of Ethelbert the Ecstatic.

Ze, unable to believe that what she was seeing was actually real, turned to examine what had prompted this fantastic display of cowardliness. But, after searching about at a reasonable height, she found nothing. And then something let out a croaking noise that might have been a theoretic attempt at a meow. Ze instantly looked down to see, about a span away, a mangy, tattered fur stole that – inexplicably – seemed to be moving. There was a vague notion that a cat might have been involved somewhere in the creature's genetic make-up – somewhere very, very far back...and since then there had been fox and weasel and what looked alarmingly like bear bred in, so it was hard to say for sure.

'Er…here kitty kitty?' she said hesitantly, holding out one hand.

'Ze, no!' Sirius hissed. 'He'll swallow you –'

But the ball of mottled fur had stepped jauntily forward and was twining through Ze's ankles, making a noise a bit like juggernaught chugging up a steep hill. Awkwardly Ze crouched down and gave the creature a few tentative pats, saying, 'that's a good, er – what is it?'

But she didn't receive an answer. Still making an attempt at petting the – she made a defining decision - cat's patchy, stiff fur, she turned over her shoulder to see three boys (Wythe had somehow managed to fit himself behind a suit of armour in one of the narrow niches) staring at her with expressions of unmitigated awe. 'She's tamed him,' Wythe whispered, his face as waxily pale as Sirius or James's.

'Tamed?' Ze asked sceptically as the cat rubbed adoringly against her shins and gave her hand a gentle, loving nibble.

'That,' Sirius explained in tones of deepest solemnity, 'is Popsy.'

Ze arched a brow, fighting the grin that was twitching her lips. 'Popsy?' she repeated, the end of the word morphing into a helpless giggle.

'He's –he's – he's,' Wythe stuttered.

'He's the devil,' James said emphatically, tightening his precarious hold on the column. 'He ate a first year about a decade ago – they had to cover it up.'

'And then there's that Hufflepuff they never found – whazzername? Marianne somebody or other – he got her, too,' Sirius said with lots of rapid nodding.

'Marianne Wilkenson - and her parents emigrated to Australia you nutter,' Ze said exasperatedly. 'She had to leave – they gave her a party, and you went to it.'

'I did?'

She rolled her eyes. 'You ate that chocolate from Zonko's and spent a week in hospital getting rid of the fingernails, remember?'

'I do,' James said. 'That was brilliant.'

Seeming to have forgotten that their student-devouring nemesis was still cuddling her ankles, the boys were slowly coming out of hiding. 'It was not,' Sirius was saying to James indignantly. 'I couldn't touch anything – not even my…well, going to the toilet was murder.'

James just sniggered.

'You know,' Wythe said nervously. 'If that cat is here, but not Filch…'

'A cat is not going to give us our detention orders,' Ze snorted, earning a baleful glare from the Slytherin.

'Listen, you stupid ta-'

'Now now children,' a phlegmatic voice said, and all four of them jumped as the emaciated, straggly-haired form of Argus Filch loomed out of the shadows. 'Do behave,' he said with a leering smile. 'We wouldn't want anyfing bad to happen, would we?'

For the first time in their history at school, the three Gryffindors and one Slytherin acted together, all taking a neat step away from the frankly frightening Filch. Popsy, objecting strongly to the loss of Ze's shins and petting hands, choose to voice his indignity in a screeching yowl. The moment the sound commenced Filch's jacket began to twitch, and a mangy pair of ears poked out of the collar.

'Well there he is, poppet,' Filch crooned to the ears, causing the four students to back up another step, glancing at one another nervously. 'There's your nice chap Popsy.'

'"Nice chap?"' breathed James disbelievingly.

But Filch appeared to be completely serious, for he was now removing the ears – and the dingy, scrawny cat attached to them – from his jacket and placing her on the floor. 'Now don't be shy, love,' he said. 'Your fellow's here to take you out proper, in'nt he?'

Ze and Sirius exchanged an incredulous glance: Filch thought his cat was going on a date? But, amazingly enough, he appeared to be right. Popsy, deciding that Ze just didn't have what he was looking for, let out a ferocious growl and strutted across the floor to Filch's cat, who was bashfully washing a paw by her (at least, Ze hoped it was a her) master's feet. As the four of the watched, aghast, Popsy stopped just before Filch's cat and reached out to bat her – gently – with one paw. To such shameless flirtation she could hardly remain aloof, and with a flick of her tail that was unquestionably coquettish she stood and twined round Popsy, who shot the four students a libidinously smug grin.

'That is so wrong,' Sirius breathed.

'Now don't you keep her out till all hours,' Filch said to Popsy. 'She's a lady, my Mrs Norris is, and I won't have you impinging on her virtue. She's to be home by eleven sharp, you hear?'

Popsy's response was a rusty yowl that might have meant anything from "I've got a really wicked case of fleas" to "piss off, you old codger".

But, it seemed to be good enough for Filch, because he gave his cat a fond pat and said, almost mistily, 'On with you then – you're only young once.' As if they understood, the two cats turned and trotted down the corridor, Mrs Norris's tail waving jauntily. 'And mind he doesn't get fresh!' Filch called after them, staring until they were gone. Ze could have sword she saw him dash away a tear.

'Er, if she's called Mrs Norris, why's she, um, going round on…dates?' she asked Filch, who whirled round and glowered at her.

'I called her after my auntie, I did, best name in the world. She's got every right to enjoy herself a bit now and then – it is the weekend, after all.'

'Oh, yeah, definitely,' Ze said, backing away from the confrontation. 'I just, well – lovely name, Mrs Norris, very nice. Um, when do we start cleaning the bedpans?'

Filch flashed a yellow grin. 'Eager are you, missy? Well I'll just have to disappoint you then – there's no bedpans need scrubbing tonight. No, you'll be having loads more fun than that. These two,' he jerked his thumb at Wythe and James, who were standing more or less side by side, 'will be having the time o' their lives in the dungeons. Got a bit of maintenance work to do on a few of the armour gents – the toothbrushes is already laid out.'

James and Wythe groaned, realised they were harmonising, and glared at one another.

'As for you two,' Filch grinned, obviously relishing the news he was about to impart, 'you're going to have all sorts of fun. That skeleton what hangs in the Defence Against the Dark Arts Classroom?'

'Yeah?' Sirius asked, feeling as though he'd rather not know.

'Took a bit of a tumble today, it did – needs to be put together again.'

'No,' Ze whispered.

'Oh yes,' Filch cackled. 'Four thousand two hundred seventy three bits of bone – I fink they've done you a bit of a diagram, just so you know where everyfing's supposed to be, like.'

There was nothing to say to this. Sirius didn't even feel that falling to his knees, raising his hands to heaven, and crying "why?" in an anguished shout would do the situation justice. Ze simply seemed to be speechless.

'Right,' Filch said gleefully. 'Let's be on our way then – loads to do, not nearly enough time to do it in!'

*.*.*

'This one looks a bit like a finger,' Sirius said an hour later, holding up a splinter of bone roughly the size of his own thumb.

'Dragons don't have fingers,' Ze sighed. 'Probably it's another bit of the wing.'

Sirius groaned and, dragging the diagram they'd been given a bit closer to his side of the table, began searching for something that looked remotely like what he had in his hand. When Filch had said "diagram", Sirius had pictured a detailed drawing done to scale; what they had was more like a wildly disproportionate child's rendering of the assembled skeleton. Someone had, kindly, thought to sketch out the more important bones in some detail on the back, but that was really all the reliable help they had. And, considering several of the bones had splintered when the skeleton hit the stone floor, it wasn't getting them very far.

'Too big…too small…' Sirius muttered as he compared the fragment in his hand with the drawings on the page.

'I need to go shopping.'

The entire world froze. Sirius's heart rose into his throat – his pulse pounded, and the air left his lungs. Just as his vision began to go dim, he realised that the world really was ending.

'Sirius, you alright?' Ze was asking from very far away. And then she was patting him on the back and putting her wrist to his forehead, looking for fever. 'You're not having a fit are you?'

Sight and feeling seemed to be coming back, and when he attempted to suck in a breath of air, he discovered he could. Moments after that, he had to speak. 'Did you – did you – did you say – you had to go - shopping.'

Ze drew back, an amused smile curving her lips. 'No,' she said, folding her arms. 'I said I need to go shopping.'

'B-b-but that's…that's…mad.'

'Not really,' she grinned. 'People all over the world do it every day.'

'But shopping, well, that's – its for g-' he stopped himself just in time, swallowing.

But Ze finished the thought for him. 'Girls, yes, I know – and, as we've already established that I am a girl, there's nothing odd about my wanting to do a bit of shopping.'

Sirius shifted uncomfortably. 'Well, what did you have in mind then?' he managed to ask.

'Oh, the usual sorts of things,' she shrugged. 'I'm out of sweets, it'll be Jacko's birthday, so I'll need something for him…and I never bought a new arm guard, so that's on the list as well…' she chewed her lip, sorting a vertebra into the proper pile. 'Oh yeah,' she added absently, plucking up another fragment, 'and I need knickers.'

Sirius snapped the delicate metacarpal he was holding in half, gasping so violently he choked on his own tongue. 'What?' he asked in a strangled voice.

She cast him yet another amused glance. 'I can't see why you're so surprised – you already know I wear them.'

'Yeah – but – I mean…did you have to, you know, tell me?'

She gave him a bewildered look. 'Sirius, it's not like it's a dirty secret or anything – they're just pants. And of course I had to tell you - I've got no idea where you can buy stuff like that in Hogsmeade.'

'And I do?' he asked incredulously. She just gave him a look. 'I'm a guy,' he cried.

She arched a brow as though to say "So?"

'Why would I know where you can buy – buy – girl's pants?'

'Because you just would, Sirius,' she said with a shrug. 'So don't bother denying it.' He folded his arms sulkily over his chest. 'Oh, come on, you know you do – I'd bet half my broomstick you've even been there.' Sirius felt his cheeks flush. 'Oh!' she crowed. 'You have.'

'I have – ' Sirius glanced around, irrationally afraid someone else might be listening. 'I have,' he continued in a much quieter voice, his tone no less terse, 'been there once.' He swallowed, trying very hard not to think about it. 'And I am not going back.'

'Well then you can at least give me directions,' she said airily.

Sirius winced. 'Er, well, that's sort of…'

'Two lefts and a right off the high street, come on, it's easy,' she coaxed.

'I'm…well, the thing is, I'm sort of…awful at directions,' he admitted. 'I mean, once I've been somewhere, I can get back, no problem, but I can't really, er, tell anyone else how to do it.'

She stared at him as though he hadn't just confessed to being horrible at one of the things Blokes Just Understand, So Don't Bother Asking Questions. She just blinked 'That makes no sense.'

'Yeah, I know, really browns Remus off.'

'Then I guess you'll just have to walk me there.'

'What? No. Noooo.'

'Sirius, you aren't going to turn into a girl just because you point me to the shop – we can even leave before everyone else so no one has to see you near it.'

'Zazzer…'

'You agreed to help me,' she pointed out.

'Help you go shopping for knickers? No I didn't!'

'Well, you agreed to help me get better at being a girl. And knickers are part of that.'

This didn't exactly strike Sirius as being sound logic. 'But you've already got knickers -'

'Yes, plain, boring, white ones. I happen to have it on very good authority – well, alright, from Serena – that every girl ought to own something a little more, er, interesting. Its got something to do with building confidence,' she added, sounding doubtful.

'You're going to go buy new knickers because Serena told you to?' Sirius asked incredulously – really, he thought she'd learnt her lesson where Serena was concerned.

'No,' she said, almost indignantly. 'I'm going to buy new knickers because I need them, and I'm going to buy nice knickers because it doesn't hurt to try something new. Or, I hope it doesn't hurt – frankly, some of the stuff Serena wears looks a little – '

'I do not want to know,' Sirius cried, shutting his eyes and putting his hands over his ears. After a few seconds he cracked an eye open to see Ze watching him, decidedly unimpressed. Gingerly he removed his hands from his ears and said, in as dignified a manner as possible, 'There are some things I just don't need to hear about, right?'

'Okay, fine, you take me to the knicker shop and I won't say another word.'

'Can't you get Serena to take you?'

'She's got a date with somebody called Alpheus, and anyway, her sense of direction is probably worse than yours.'

'Oh, thanks.'

She shrugged, grinning. 'Honesty in all things.'

'Look, I just, um, can't,' Sirius said, wincing as he thought of how torturous It would be to walk Ze within twenty metres of the shop, knowing what she was going inside to do. He'd be lucky if he could walk back to the castle. Or even to the pub.

But suddenly Ze was looking frightfully embarrassed, biting her lip and refusing to meet his gaze. 'Look, I know that lots of people seem to think that we're, er, involved, and I'm sorry 'cos I know it's crap and you hate people talking about you, so if you'd rather not be around me-'

'No! No, it's not that,' Sirius hastened to reassure her, seeing very real hurt in her face. 'It's just, er –'

'Sirius, it's okay, I'm really not offended. It happens to Jack and me all the time, and I know it must be a pain right up your arse, having everyone think you're suddenly – well, I wouldn't say dating, but –'

'Ze, I don't care if people think I'm shagging you,' he interrupted. 'Well, I mean, I do, because people shouldn't be saying those sorts of things about you, and even if we were shagging, it wouldn't be anybody's business –' he prattled, thinking of the gossip he had overheard the day before as they had exited the Great Hall. Two sixth year girls had eyed Ze up and down in a frankly judgemental way. The taller of the two had sniffed and said, "I really don't see what's so special – she looks like a ten year old boy." Her friend had shrugged and replied, "yeah, but if she's shagging both Potter and Black, she must have something good."

He'd wanted to turn around and say something scathing, or tell them that Ze was not shagging James, or just tell them off for thinking that it was any of their bloody business in the first place. But, of course, he hadn't because before he could form words adequate for the situation, they'd already breezed by and were gossiping about other things. Sirius hadn't thought Ze knew that people were saying that sort of stuff though, and he got stroppy just thinking that someone might have said something to her face.

'Er, Sirius? You just sort of stopped, right in the middle of that sentence, and now you're making this growling noise…'

'Sorry,' he apologised, snapping back. 'I was just – I didn't mean to, er, growl. I just wanted to tell you that I don't care what people think is going on between us, because it's none of their business. But - but, if someone's said something to you, or given you a funny look, or –'

'You are not getting into a punch up because someone called me names. It isn't your fault people think I'm a slag – well, actually, it sort of is, but you didn't mean it and I don't care. I just don't want you to be uncomfortable.' He stared at her, and then, before he knew it, he was laughing. 'Oh-kay, don't really see what's funny…'

He gestured back and forth between them, trying to get enough air to talk. 'This,' he finally said. 'This entire conversation. It's bloody ridiculous. We're standing on either side of a wrecked dragon skeleton, talking about how we're not personally offended, we're just concerned about one another, and what you think and – I just, it's crap. It's complete crap. You told me you don't care. I told you I don't care. Everything's copasetic, so why are we still saying things like "I just don't want you to be uncomfortable"?'

Ze shrugged, a smile twitching at her lips. 'Because that's what we'd have to say to anyone else?'

'Exactly. So let's just quit, because if you're not going to let me beat someone up for you, I don't really see any fun in it.'

'If you get to punch someone, so do I,' she said. 'Fair's fair.'

'Alright fine, you can have…fuck, I don't know. Who do you want to punch?'

Ze thought for a moment. 'I dunno. Who do you want to punch?'

'Er…I don't know either.'

'Okay, so the punching's off until we decide, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'Now, about you taking me to buy knickers…'

Sirius wasn't sure how she did it. He had a vague notion that he enjoyed it, because he remembered laughing, and then he remembered thinking how easy it was going to be to win, and then their elbows were on the table and their hands were interlocked and they were counting down for three and she looked up and smiled at him just like that and suddenly his hand was down on the table, and he'd lost.

'That wasn't fair!' he cried.

'What?!'

'You – you distracted me!'

'Did not!'

'Did too!'

'I did not!'

'You did too!'

'I did too!

'You did no-' he realised just in time. 'Oooh, that was almost clever.'

She was grinning. 'I just thought, "what would work on three year old?" and went from there.'

He grinned back, then folded his arms over his chest and tried to look forbidding. 'You still cheated.'

'Sirius, I did not cheat! We said "one, two, three" and went – and okay, so you weren't exactly putting up a full fight, but I definitely didn't cheat.'

'You smiled at me!'

'Oh, what, that's against the rules now?'

'Well it is when you smile like that!'

'Sirius, they're just teeth, everyone's got them – well, not everyone filing with the NHS, but –'

'That isn't the point- wait, what's the NHS?'

'Never mind, it makes Madame Digweed look like strawberries and cream. Anyway, my point is, smiling is not a criminal act. You smile at me all the time, and I don't go walking off cliffs or anything.'

Predictably, this bit of flattery did not improve Sirius's mood. 'Right, I'll just stop then.'

'Oh no you won't, you've got a lovely smile – you've even got a dimple, which really isn't fair. I'm just saying that you're completely distracting, and you don't hear me yelling "foul!" every time you do something nice.'

Well, that did make things marginally better. 'I still want a rematch.'

'Oh bugger off – you lost, fair and square. You're doing it.'

'Am not.'

'Are too.'

'Am not.'

'Are – oh, I'm not doing this again. It was arm wrestling -you lost. You're taking me to the knicker shop.'

Sirius stuck out his bottom lip and gave her the full-on pout, including the Soulful Stare Through the Charmingly Dishevelled Lock of Hair. Ze swallowed, and her cheeks went faintly pink, but she stood her ground. He tried a few Agonising, Guilt-Inducing Blinks and even a Decidedly Adorable Lip-Nibbling, just to make sure, then finally gave the cause up as lost. 'Do I have to go inside?' he asked petulantly.

'Yes,' she replied, smug in her victory. 'And you have to carry the bag.'

He let out a tortured groan. 'Fine,' he said at length. 'But I'm not doing anything that involves fetching you different sizes whilst you're trying things on.'

She started, aghast. 'You mean they want you to try them on?'

'Er…'

They stood in silence for a moment, this being a subject simply too incomprehensible for words. Ze was disgusted, but Sirius couldn't quite fit in any worries about hygiene around the thoughts of Ze in a lingerie fitting room.

'This might not be the best idea I've ever had,' Ze mumbled doubtfully. 'Maybe we should sleep on it.'

Sirius had never heard a worse idea in his life.

*.*.*.*

'You're doing what?'

'Going to the village with Ze,' Sirius said as blandly as he could.

'That's not what you said,' James snapped out, his face pale. 'You said – you said you were – going – going –'

'Shopping,' Remus concluded, sounding nothing like his usual wry self.

'Well,' Sirius hedged, feeling his cheeks go pink. 'Isn't that what you go to the village to do?'

'Yes, but, really,' James blustered. 'Unless it's dungbombs or sweets – those sorts of things. Proper things.'

'The sort of stuff everyone needs,' Peter agreed, nodding rapidly.

'And that's not really shopping, is it?' Remus supplied. 'I mean, that's just procuring the essentials. Shopping, well, that's all about standing around whittering – "in the blue, do you think?" "no, the yellow goes so much better with your eyes".' He dropped the high, feminine voice he'd been mimicking, and shuddered. 'Completely different thing all together.'

The others all nodded, agreeing heartily, looking relieved to have their sentiments articulated with such maturity and elegance. 'Well, she said she was out of chocolates, and that she needed a birthday gift for her mate, and a new arm guard, so…'

'Oh,' James said slowly, considering. 'Well, that sounds safe…I suppose.'

'Just don't, you know, call it shopping,' Remus added.

'It's just not on,' Peter explained earnestly.

Sirius stared at his three best mates, wondering what they would say if he told them the rest of it. Deciding that he enjoyed having a bit of dignity to his name, he refrained, hoping Ze would keep her promise to go to the pants shop first. Or, perhaps she'd decided against going at all – that would really be splendid. But, given the way his luck was running, hardly likely. 'Well,' he said, hoping he didn't sound too much like he was going to his death, 'I'd best be off.'

'What?'

'No!

''Have you lost your mind?!'

'Er…' Sirius said, not quite sure how to answer that last. 'Yes?'

'You're skipping breakfast?' Peter gasped, his hand actually going to his heart in a gesture of shock befitting the heroine of a Bronte novel.

'Pads, are you feeling well? A bit faint?'

'Here, he does look pale –'

'Check his forehead –'

'I'm fine!' Sirius shouted, pushing them all off. 'I just…I'm not hungry.'

They stared at him in gaping silence. Peter's jaw flapped a few times, and Remus blinked, but other than that, they were struck not only dumb, but still. Sirius was skipping breakfast. This was not done. It did not happen. There would be a table covered in food – toast and eggs and sausage and cereal and porridge with treacle and bacon and beans and- and – and he wouldn't be there to eat his share. Impossible. Unthinkable. Inexplicable. There was only one possible conclusion, and James uttered it with a pale cheek and faint voice: 'He's dying.'

'I am not dying!' Sirius cried. 'Really, I'm not sick, I'm not dead – I feel bloody brilliant, okay? Now I'm going. I'll see you in the pub at noon, right?' And with that, he turned and stomped out of the dormitory, ignoring the fact that they were staring, open-mouthed, at his back.

Once the door had shut behind him the other three turned to look at one another. 'Something's not right,' James said faintly.

'He's passing up food!' Peter said confusedly. 'For the village. And shopping.'

'I think,' Remus said very slowly, 'that something very funny is going on. And we're going to find out what it is.'

'Of course we are,' Peter nodded. 'So what's the plan?'

James gave him a haughty stare. 'We don't need a plan. We're Marauders.'

*.*.*.*

It was just gone nine in the morning, but Sirius wasn't feeling bright-eyed and chipper. On the contrary, he was practically shaking with nerves. As promised, he had (after groaning, pouting, arguing, and even begging – all to no avail) given up hope that he would survive the morning, and led Ze to the one place she was determined to go: the pants shop. She had taken pity on him, saying that of course they could go there first and get it over with, and Sirius even managed to feel faintly grateful for this kindness. After he'd accepted that it really was his fate to die of either unsatisfied lust or mortification, of course.

They had left a good hour before the rest of the students, and even the village was still drowsing through the early morning, the shopkeepers hanging out their signs as Sirius and Ze passed. Sirius had considered taking a "wrong turn" and getting them lost, but had rather thought Ze would notice. And so, here they were, standing before the shop, which at least had the decency to be located down a secluded alley, girding their loins for the battle ahead.

'They don't leave much to the imagination, do they?' Ze asked.

Rather appropriately the shop was called Circe's, and Sirius wasn't sure if Ze's comment was directed towards the scantily clad mannequins in the window displays, or the sign. She was eyeing both with faintly arched brows, and seemed torn between amusement and downright horror. Given the faint grin, Sirius decided that it was the cheeky sign, which read "Bringing Men to Their Knees Since 1772", that had got her attention. After all, an advert line like that was all sorts of fun.

Trying not to stare at the goods set out in the window, he managed to keep his voice steady long enough to say, 'No, guess not.'

'It just looks a bit…'

'Like underwear?' Sirius suggested drily.

Ze favoured him a glare, and then straightened her shoulders. 'If my grandmother could see me now,' she murmured darkly, and pulled open the door to the shop.

Sirius, praying no one they knew would be inside, stepped after her. Luck was with him when it came to familiar faces: the shop was completely empty of people. But that only meant that the things left out on the tables were all the more visible. Everywhere Sirius looked scintillating bits of lace and silk and Merlin-knew-what were winking at him. This was not a good idea his common sense told him. Not a good idea at all.

The shop sold a bit of everything, from staid ageing witch bloomers to racy, saucy hen-night joke gifts. While some of the displays were tastefully done, it was quite clear that the best way to sell knickers was to make whoever was buying them assume she would look like some sort of sex goddess, no matter her age or physical condition. Which, Sirius could manfully admit, was quite the right way to do things. He just wished they'd managed to do a bit more poorly with the "sex goddess" theme.

Ze, for her part, was looking slightly horrified. 'They seem to be missing a few key elements of the serviceable knicker here,' he heard her mutter as she stared at a table covered with thongs in various colours, some sheer, some lacey. Sirius wasn't sure why girls felt the need to wear things like that - they could hardly be comfortable. He'd once heard Grace and Serena saying something about old-fashioned underpants ruining "the lines" of clothing. Privately, he hadn't been sure what sort of "lines" the school uniform had, and so he'd just kept silent and counted himself lucky that Grace was inclined not to ruin them. Because uncomfortable they might be, but they were also bloody brilliant.

'Funny,' Ze said, turning to him with one of the string-and-lace contraptions dangling off her finger, 'the sign doesn't say they specialise in torture devices.'

Sirius, who was trying not to stare at either her or anything else interesting, and was consequently darting his eyes about the room in a decidedly frantic way, shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner. 'They're supposed to be quite, er, comfortable, once you get used to them.'

'Brilliant – you buy some then,' Ze sniggered, dropping the pair she was holding and eyeing the rest of the selection with an air of distinct unease. 'You really think this stuff is nice?'

Sirius, who was getting a headache from constant rapid eye-motion, fought not to throw up his hands in defeat. 'Not being a girl, I honestly wouldn't know.'

'They just seem a bit…useless.' She poked at a pile of lavender lace and grimaced. 'I've never understood how Serena and that lot managed to wear them all the time.'

'Yes, well, wearing fancy knickers is supposed to, I dunno, build your confidence or something. Especially if they match.' He was now babbling, unable to stop for fear of blurting out something like "they turn me on".

'Hm, I suppose that's possible,' Ze mumbled. 'I mean, Lily hasn't got any self-esteem issues…' Sirius began to calculate square roots to keep from imagining his best mate's dream girl in her fancy knickers. Ze had ambled off and was now poking unenthusiastically at a quivering pile of pastel lace. From what Sirius could tell during the half-second he allowed himself to look, the items were somewhat more conservative than the skimpy pants closer to the door – at least, they seemed not to be substituting string for any important fabric panels. They were, however, still a far cry from wholesome white cotton, and Sirius felt sweat bead on his upper lip. He turned his back on the sight of those slender fingers running over see-through black silk, and nearly went blind.

Once he'd recovered from the dazzling light, he realised that he wasn't actually staring at the tunnel to heaven, but some sort of lingerie – he wasn't quite sure what you called it, but "bathing suit" didn't seem quite right, seeing as it was covered in sequins – that was reflecting enough light to be considered a super nova. It was dressed onto a mannequin, where it might best function as an impromptu disco ball, and on the table surrounding it were the most lurid, disturbing, and frankly fantastic things Sirius had ever seen. 'What the hell…' he breathed, staring at it in confusion.

Ze, who had heard, came round to peer over his shoulder. 'Tell me they're joking,' she said in a blank voice.

Sirius slowly shook his head, not sure whether to laugh, cry, or get excited. 'I don't think they are.'

Having to look away from the costume lest she be blinded, Ze finally noticed the items on the table below, and had she not already been shocked past all thought, she might have said something scathing. As it was, she plucked up a disturbingly miniscule scrap of red that had black ribbons up the front in what appeared to be more lacing, exactly like that found on a corset - or a shoe. Ze stared, perplexed, and Sirius stared in wonder. She then flipped the knickers over to stare at the back, which was virtually nonexistent – just a band of red with more of the black lacing that would descend into the crack of the wearer's bum. 'Please tell me you don't find this attractive,' she said, looking up from the underpants to Sirius.

Sirius swallowed, not sure how to tell her that he couldn't help it. 'Er…'

'Oh Sirius,' she groaned. 'It's so…cheap.'

'Well,' he replied defensively. 'That sort of does it for most guys – I mean…it's just how we are.'

For a moment she pondered this, and then she began to grin, and Sirius found himself calculating square roots again. 'So what you're saying,' she began, dangling the pants from her forefinger wickedly, 'is that blokes find things like this inherently attractive? Mm?'

'Well, um, not – maybe – yes?'

'So the idea of someone having these on under, say, a school kilt, really does it for you.'

Sirius's eyeballs were now rolling around so fast in his head the world was just one enormous blur of knickers. 'Y-yes,' he stammered.

'Then maybe you'd agree that the idea behind pants like this isn't comfort – or even confidence – for the girl wearing them, it's knowing that if you know she's got them on, you're wrapped completely round her finger?'

Unable to look at Ze, holding those scandalous pants, any longer, Sirius closed his eyes and blindly nodded. Since he was mentally berating himself for imagining her wearing them, he didn't see Ze's wicked grin as she looped one elastic band round her thumb and pulled back the opposite side with the fingers of her other hand. In fact, he was so busy trying not to get up close and personal with the pants, he had no idea they were heading straight for him until they'd smacked him in the face.

'What the –' His eyes flew open in time to see the scrap of red and black rebound off his nose and tumble to the floor.

'Seemed as a good a use for them as any,' she chortled, flashing a cheeky grin as she turned to the next table.

Sirius couldn't believe she'd just done that. 'You – you hit me in the face with your knickers!'

'I did not,' she laughed. 'They're hardly mine. I wouldn't wear something like that – bloody hell, can you imagine trying to sit a broom with one of those riding up your –'

'But you hit me in the face.'

'You were acting like a complete twat,' she replied airily. 'Gah, how does anyone wear this?' she asked, holding up a contraption made of lace and string that seemed to have the proper number of leg holes – and quite a few other holes besides. Sirius couldn't help it: her expression was so confused, so disgusted, he had to laugh. 'What? Now you think its funny?' she asked, turning on him. 'First it's stutter and look away and "I'm too modest for this", and now you're laughing?'

'Well,' he sniggered, 'it's funny.'

She glanced back at the strung together bits of lace in her hand and began to chuckle too. 'Yeah, it rather is. Who buys this stuff, anyway?'

'Do you really want to know?' he teased.

'Well, at fourteen galleons, I'd say most students haven't the pocket money for it,' she teased back. 'Which means the only ones you can rightfully imagine in these posh pants are the tea-'

'No! No, do not say it!'

'What?' she asked innocently, holding up a pair of lacey pink suspenders and a matching bra. 'You don't think the Artihmancy witch would look nice in this?' She perused the colour a moment, and added, 'Perhaps the pink wouldn't be best with her complexion –'

'Please,' Sirius begged through his laughter, 'I really don't want to be thinking about this.'

'Ah – Cardew, however, would look gorgeous in this,' Ze crowed, snatching up what looked like another bathing suit in brilliant green and gold, lined with feathery trim. 'It's just her style. In fact, I'll bet she's got a whole line of them, one for every day of the week.'Sirius spotted an enormously voluminous pair of pants with a hideous ruffled trim, almost like old-fashioned bloomers, and, not to be left out, grabbed them. 'These,' he said with a flourish, holding them up to his own frame and turning round to strike a pose, 'would look absolutely divine on McGonagall, don't you think?'

'No Mr Black,' a heavy Scottish brogue replied. 'I most certainly do not!'

The entire world froze, narrowing down the pair of eyes boring murderous holes right through his skull.

'Oh fuck.'


	20. Village Idiots

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Teamwork: a concept corrupted and marginalised by posters and mottoes intended to inspire corporate groups and young children (two of the meanest, most heartless sub-sets of the world's population) to work together, the idea of teamwork is nevertheless the most basic building block of football. all players rely on the team, on the reflexes of fellow players, the position play, the strategies of the whole. without the seamless, collective efforts of the entire side, football would merely be a game, not a sport.

Chapter 20: Village Idiots

Sirius was having his first ever out-of-body experience. It had started off a bit rough (he had vague memories of horrible hallucinations involving Professor McGonagall and piles of knickers) but now he was being towed along by the hand by a laughing, mischievous Ze, and he rather thought he could get used to this sort of life. Especially if she was hauling him off somewhere they would be alone- well, so this was an alleyway. Not precisely what he'd imagined when he specified "private", but there definitely wasn't anyone else around –

'You,' she gasped, 'are absolutely barking mad.'

Sirius had the strangest urge to put his arms around her – and he would have, if he hadn't been carrying an enormous black shopping bag stuffed with silver-spangled tissue. So he settled for grinning at her like an idiot.

She wiped at her eyes and choked out a few noises that seemed half laugh, half sob. 'What were you thinking? Telling her you wore girl's pants –'

The grin diminished slightly. Sirius felt an unpleasant sensation, perhaps the mental equivalent of a wet willy, and cowered away from the realisation that this was reality, trying to barge back in and ruin his day.

'For fuck's sake Sirius, you said you liked everything in lace.' Ze was practically howling now, her shoulders shaking so hard she had to collapse back against the brick wall behind her.

Sirius was having trouble seeing the situation in quite the same light. Something about that mention of lace had stirred a distant memory – perhaps the vestiges of a particularly loathsome nightmare…

'I really couldn't believe you were talking at all – she just kept staring at you, her jaw getting closer and closer to the floor- ' at this point Ze sunk down the wall to curl, rocking back and forth with the force of her laughter, against the brick. 'It was like you didn't even know what you were saying – like you were just talking to keep anyone else from getting a word in. You know, one of those "as long as no one else says anything, it won't be real" things.'

That mental wet willy was getting worse. In fact, Sirius was now fairly sure reality wasn't so much badgering as bludgeoning its way back into his world. So he did the only appropriate thing: he denied all. 'No.'

'Yes,' Ze gasped as she clutched at her stomach. 'Yes it was exactly like that.'

'No.'

This time his tone was more emphatic, his voice stronger, and she glanced up. 'You – you really don't think you did, do you?'

'I couldn't have,' he insisted. 'There's no possible way.'

She was wiping at her eyes again, giving little snorts and giggles that she couldn't seem to control. 'You mean you don't remember it? At all? Not even the bit where you turned around and asked her if she thought those awful bloomers would look good?'

'No,' Sirius repeated, but this time it was the whisper of resignation. Because it was coming back. All of it.

'Oh yes,' she chuckled. 'You thought it was me, and you held up this massive pair of white pants and turned around asking if they wouldn't look just spiffing on McGonagall, only it wasn't me behind you. It was her.'

'I- I did. Oh piss, I did do that, didn't I?''Yeah,' Ze snorted, covering her mouth as she fought to contain her laughter.

'I am dead.'

'Her face,' Ze managed to gasp out.

'I had those horrible white pants, just waving them around –'

'Your face.'

'And then I – and – and then I – ' he stopped, words failing him as all the blood drained from his face.

'You told her they were your favourite style.' At this, Ze lost the battle, and simply collapsed onto the ground, arms wrapped round her middle, mouth open in a silent, convulsive parody of laughter. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and her entire face was scrunched up, red and mottled and with her mouth gaping open like that, she looked as though she might have been suffering from heart failure rather than an attack of the giggles. But really, it was completely appropriate.

'What else was I supposed to tell her?' Sirius cried desperately. 'I'd just said – I'd just said – I'd just –' he broke off, covering his mouth with his hand and desperately trying to keep the memories from returning. But it was no use – he was reliving the last quarter of an hour in vivid, lurid detail. And he was discovering that he would have to accept one terrifying, life-altering fact: he'd just told Minerva McGonogall that he wore girl's pants.

It had, after all, been the only plausible explanation.

She'd been boring holes through his skull with that glare, and he'd known – absolutely, irrevocably, and without doubt – known that if he had admitted that they'd been joking about teachers in fancy knickers, she would have expelled him faster than you can say "shopping for a new chastity belt". So he'd done the only thing he could think of: he'd held the pants up, mentioned that he really liked the cut, and handed them to Ze, saying "here, these for me, and maybe these as well."

And then he'd tossed her the hideous pair of red and black lace-ups she'd been so appalled by. In horror he'd watched McGonagall's lips purse and begin to open, obviously preparing for a tirade, and he simply hadn't been ready to hear it. So he'd opened his mouth and…talked. About everything – everything he could remember about girl's pants, and quite a few things he was sure he'd made up. Even now the urge to clap his hands over his ears and drown out the sound of his own voice was overwhelming. Eventually, by the grace of all that was holy, he had managed to shut up. But not before he'd humiliated himself past all understanding.

At that point Ze, who up to then hadn't been able to decide between crippling laughter and horrific embarrassment, went with the former. Her words practically unintelligible thanks to her giggles, she'd said something about helping Sirius pick out things in his "style" before grabbing up a handful of fabric from the nearest table and sprinting for the till. They'd left McGonagall standing between two tables of frankly scandalous underwear, her jaw scraping the floor, as Ze had shoved the lot across the counter at the bewildered shop assistant.

'Do you want this wrapped up?' the girl had asked, her eyes careening from Sirius to Ze to McGonagall and back.

Sirius had let out a hysterical hiccough and so it fell to Ze to say, in tones that could only be described as desperate, 'we just want to leave.'

The girl, who looked to be no more than twenty, had given him another befuddled glance and begun to tally up their purchases as quickly as she could, stuffing the lot into a smart black bag. When she was finished she'd reeled off a total that could have bought a small holiday cottage in the Cotswolds, and Ze had shoved a handful of gold across the counter, said not to worry about the change and, towing a shuddering Sirius behind her, sprinted for the door.

They had passed McGonagall at the 3/4 turn, and Sirius had had a moment to register that she seemed to be making the transition from gobsmacked shopper to suspicious deputy headmistress. Ze had wasted no time barrelling through the shop door, hauling Sirius through the street and round the nearest corner, very well aware that the only chance of survival was Immediate and Complete Disappearance. Sirius was grateful- by the time he's stopped talking, his brain had been more or less in meltdown, and he doubted he could have gotten himself around a table, much less down the street.

He'd told Minerva McGonagall that he favoured women's knickers. That they offered more variety and – sweet Circe, had he really gone so far? – support. He couldn't quite recall every word of his mangled soliloquy (a stroke of amnesia he was only too happy to be suffering), but he seemed to recall that he'd mentioned admiring McGonagall's "style" and her "efficient but classical lines". But surely that was all a weird, twisted nightmare. He couldn't possibly have spouted any such rubbish – surely he'd just taken Ze's hand, grinned lecherously and told her she should buy the skimpiest thing in the shop, and then shot McGonagall a naughty wink. Surely he'd been clever enough to do that, letting McGonagall think (since everyone else did) that he was having it off with Ze as often as bloody possible.

But, given that Ze was doubled up with laughter, not shame (at least, he assumed she was laughing – it was either that, or she'd decided reality wasn't worth it, and headed for Mental-on-the-Wold), he was rather beginning to suspect that he hadn't dreamed up the bit about McGonagall and his preference for girl's pants. In fact, he was beginning to suspect, with growing horror, that the "efficient but classical lines" had been just the tip of the iceberg. Of course, if he wanted to know exactly how much of a wanker he'd looked, Ze would have to stop laughing long enough to tell him.

'It wasn't that bad,' she said a few minutes later, wiping her eyes and nose on a tissue she'd found in the pocket of her zip-up. Sirius stared at her incredulously, and she'd bitten back an impish grin. 'Okay, it was that bad – it's pretty much the worst thing I've ever seen. Worse even than me and the pants and the Great Hall. But look on the bright side – there weren't five hundred people staring at you. It was just me and McGonagall. And the shop assistant, but she looked trustworthy, so I don't think she'll talk.'

Sirius stared at her muzzily. 'Yeah, yeah – trustworthy. I said I wore girl's pants.' This set Ze to sniggering again. 'It is not funny!' he shouted. 'It isn't – do you have any idea what this means? I practically told her I'm a poof!'

'Wearing girl's knickers doesn't mean you're a poof,' Ze said calmly. 'It just means you…wear girl's knickers. Just that, you know, you're a bit kinky - exactly the sort a Minerva McGonagall would fancy – '

'Oh gods, take that back!'

Ze just tipped her head back and laughed, shaking her head. 'Not a chance – you could probably offer her a trade off, you know. Her silence in exchange for a few photos of you in your new finery –' This was too much for Sirius. He reached out to put a hand over her mouth, but she ducked out of his grasp, her grin turning taunting. 'Just think, you could do a calendar for her – different knickers every month –'

'Will you shut it?' he laughed, reaching out to snag her arm, grappling and wrestling for control.

'Or maybe even a flip book – you know, same outfit but you change poses – agghgh!'

Sirius had given over playing fair and just grabbed her round the waist, pinning her to the wall and clapping a hand over her mouth. 'That is not funny,' he said, laughing. Her reply was garbled, and tickled his palm, but he just grinned mockingly. 'Sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you – owfgh!' Sirius stared in shock at the hand he'd just jerked away from her face. 'You bit me!' he cried in disbelief.

'And you liked it,' she winked, waggling her brows. When he gaped at her she held up her hands and laughed, 'truce?'

Deciding to take his victories where he could, Sirius nodded and flexed his hand. 'As long as you don't ever tell another soul what happened…'

'On my life,' she promised, holding up her right hand and managing not to snigger too much. 'Now, we should probably get out of here before someone comes to investigate the mysterious laughing dustbins.'

'Too right,' Sirius sighed, dusting his palms on his jeans and turning to step into the street. Behind him Ze cleared her throat, and he half turned back. 'What?'

She glanced meaningfully at the posh black shopping bag leaning against a nearby bin. 'Aren't you forgetting something?'

He gaped at her. 'No – you – you were serious? About me having to carry the bag? But it's your stuff!'

She had the nerve to grin with such cheek his knees went wobbly. 'No it's not love – every last bit of that is yours. Now,' she added as she sashayed (there really was no other word for it) by him, 'Can you handle a bit more village, or do you want to get home to try things on?'

*.*.*.*.*

The street was eerily quiet as Ze and Sirius faded round the corner. No sooner had they disappeared, however, than the lid of a rubbish bin in the alley opposite wobbled and clattered over, clanging as it rolled to a stop against the stones. Moments later James Potter and Peter Pettigrew appeared in a tangle of limbs and silvery fabric. As they scuffled to be free of one another and the invisibility cloak, Remus Lupin rose majestically over the top of a discarded vegetable crate, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Botticelli's Venus emerging from the sea– if she had been a he, of course, and lacking several metres of long blond hair. Ignoring the struggle at his feet, Remus stared after the two figures turning the corner, the black bag swinging jauntily between them in time to their steps.

Watching them now, you would never guess they'd recently been involved in an intense conversation, which had featured, with shocking regularity, the words "McGonagall" and "knickers". That they had been tussling like children in an alarmingly flirtatious manner seemed a pale and insignificant detail in light of the topic of their discourse. To quote that most notable of sleuths, something was afoot. It was enough to make Remus wish he knew someone called Watson. A doctor of some sort would be preferable, but really, he would take whatever he could get.

Anything, he thought morosely, would be an improvement over Hyacinth Bucket and Miss Marpel here.

'Ouch! That was my nose –'

'Well mind putting it by my knee then!'

Remus heaved a sigh and adjusted his massive Jackie O sunglasses, vainly tugging the waistband of his flared velvet trousers up. Honestly, couldn't they try to be a bit more inconspicuous?

*.*.*.*.*

'-I'm just saying that if you're going to bother cobbing him in front of the ref, don't get stroppy when you've got a penalty call- Oi! You!'

Ze jumped nearly a mile out of her skin, dropping her brand-new arm guard and whipping her head around to see who Sirius was shouting at. Realising it was Clive – with Claudia in tow, joy of joys – she immediately grinned and, shoving her guard back into the sack, joined Sirius in waving. 'Where've you been all these years?' she joked as they crossed the street, joining Clive and Claudia on the other side.

'Yeah?' Clive asked, puzzled, as he grinned back.

'We haven't seen you in ages,' Sirius explained. 'S'like you've fallen off the face of the –'

'Ah-hem,' Claudia said loudly. Ze noticed that she didn't even bother to sound like she was clearing her throat – she just said "ahem" as though it were an actual word, pronouncing it in accents that would've done a Royal proud, they were so posh.

'Oh, er, hey Claudia,' Sirius said, jerking slightly. Ze caught the faint twitch of his mouth as he fought to keep a grin at bay: he'd clearly noticed the explicitly articulated onomatopoeia, too. 'Been awhile since we've seen you as well…'

'Yeah,' Ze chimed in, not sure whether to be amused or annoyed – Claudia was giving her another of those snotty looks, and Clive was, as usual, oblivious. 'What've you been off doing? Taking inventory in the broom cupboards?' she added jokingly, addressing both of them, but expecting Clive would be the one to answer.

To her surprise, he flushed a deep red, and it was Claudia who let out a false, catty laugh, saying , 'Well, I've quite stolen him away from…your little band,' she finally finished, shooting Ze a very smug look.

Ze felt her brow furrow. Their "little band"? What – like Robin Hood's Merry Men? What did she think they were, bloody Morris dancers? 'Er, right,' she managed to reply, shooting Clive a cock-browed look that clearly said "and that translates to?"

'Yeah, we just, um, bunked off a day,' Clive said, his face still positively glowing. 'Had loads of…studying to do…'

'Oooooh,' Ze and Sirius chorused, taking a collective step back.

'Right,' Sirius continued, solo, 'got it. Hope you had a lovely, um, time. Mind the duster crates, they tend to leave splinters. Just a tip. So, we'll be going then!' he added, grabbing Ze's arm and tugging none-too-gently.

'See you,' she nodded, tearing her eyes away from the couple – one of whom was blushing furious, the other of whom was looking determinedly smug…

…or at least Claudia was looking smug until Clive called, 'Oi, Zaz, you'll be around tonight, won't you?' after their retreating backs.

Ze, completely distracted by the fact that Sirius was all but holding her hand, managed to turn back. 'Yeah, 'course- oh, wait, I won't!' she cried, suddenly remembering. 'Detention,' she added, pulling a face. 'But you can have me all day tomorrow – breakfast, yeah?'

'Yeah,' Clive called back, grinning, and Ze couldn't help but return the smile. He'd be dying to tell her all about his clandestine tryst with Claudia (which wouldn't be so much fun to hear, but she'd survive), and she could relate Jack and Sophie of the Perfect Eyebrows. It would be almost like having her mate back – provided Claudia didn't feel the need to stare beadily at them through the entire conversation.

Oh don't be such a stupid cow, Ze berated herself. She hasn't got anything against you – you're completely imagining it. Except, when she glanced over her shoulder to see if they were still there, she was just in time to see Claudia say something sharp to Clive, before turning over her shoulder to glare at Ze. For a moment the two girls locked eyes, and though Ze tried a friendly smile, all she got for her trouble was an increase in glower-heat. So, that more or less settled that. Sirius, who was glancing back at Clive and Claudia's now-retreating backs as well, gave a small shake of his head and grinned.

'Never would have thought it – Clive, in a broom cupboard, with her.'

'Oh come off it – you can't think they, well, you know,' Ze said, staring. 'Can you?'

Sirius let out a chuckle, his grin decidedly puckish as he quirked a brow naughtily at her. 'You don't skive off an entire day for studying and an occasional snog. Besides, he turned beetish at the mere mention of being caught – he's either getting the whole bit, or she's got more talent than I credit her for when it comes to keeping him hooked.'

'More talent that you credit her for?' Ze parroted indignantly, not sure whether to laugh or punch him. 'It's not a bloody piano recital you know. It's – it's – it-'

'It's shagging,' he laughed, 'or can't you even say it?'

'I can say it just fine,' she sniffed to cover her embarrassment at just thinking "Clive" and "sex" in the same breath. 'But anyway, you weren't talking about shagging – you were talking about…other stuff.' At this blatant avoidance tactic Sirius sniggered. 'Oh shut up, will you? You know what I mean – and it's not the first he's had of that, so I can't see why h-' When Sirius let out another snort of laughter she threw up her hands. 'Okay, you know what? I'm through – there will be no more talking about Clive – our mate Clive – getting – getting -sexual favours in broom cupboards, right?'

By this point Sirius was positively howling. 'Sexual favours?' he repeated through a guffaw. 'First you can't say "shagging", and now you can't say "blow j-'

'Will you shut up?' she hissed, slapping a hand over his mouth and staring around nervously in case the greengrocer had been desperately listening in on their oh-so-important conversation while pretending to straighten her massive cabbages. 'Some stuff's not supposed to be said in the street, you knob.'

Sirius, his laughter contained to an occasional chortle, looked around at the cobbles, which were slowly filling as more and more students trickled down from the castle. 'Please yourself,' he said with an amiable shrug, tossing an arm around her shoulders to steer her out of the way of a passing goblin cart. 'She doesn't seem impressed with us though, does she – Claudia, I mean?'

'So it's not just me?' Ze asked, relived to be talking about a proper subject, and also relieved that Sirius has brought it up rather than forcing her to do it. 'She really does glare?'

'Yeah, but I can't tell if she's against all of us in general, or just when we try to talk to Clive,' he said quite honestly, pausing to look in the pet shop window at a fluffy ball of sleeping kittens. 'I mean, I always thought she was reasonably nice, but then it's not like I see her often, you know?' he said as one of the kittens yawned and emitted a tiny belch ending in a jet of magenta flame. 'Maybe she was just smiling and stuff because she didn't know who I was and didn't want to be rude.'

Ze refrained from telling Sirius that Claudia would have to have arrived at Hogwarts deaf, dumb, and blind not to know who he was, and instead mulled over what he'd said about her being nice. 'Funny you should put it like that, because that's what I always thought too – that she seemed nice, I mean. When he first said he fancied her I thought "brilliant – finally he's picked a normal one". But I dunno now – every time I see her she practically gives me the Evil Eye.'

'Exactly – like now she's going out with Clive she's got sole rights to him or something. S'bloody annoying,' he muttered, straightening and turning away from the window, shifting his parcel from one hand to the other. To his surprise, he saw a smile kick up one corner of Ze's mouth. 'What,' he asked. 'You still giggling about "sexual favours", or are you just laughing at my taste in cats?'

She shook her head and grinned up at him mischievously. 'Neither – I was actually thinking that something good did come of Claudia's being a complete cow.'

Sirius arched a brow as though to say "yeah?"

Her grin widened even further. 'She was so busy glaring she didn't even ask why you were carrying a bag full of McGonagall-type knickers.'

*.*.*.*.*

'Come on - budge up –'

'I can't, there's nowhere else to go!'

'Ouch – you stood on m-'

'Will you shut up?' Remus hissed, nursing his own recently-trampled foot as he shoved James a bit further down the window ledge they were standing on.

'I don't see why we can't just use magic,' Peter muttered.

'Because there are rules,' James replied in an irate whisper.

'Oh, so we can have rules but we can't have a plan?' Peter shot back petulantly, vainly trying to keep his toes perched on the narrow ledge.

'Well it wasn't my idea –' James began to snip back.

'Quiet,' Remus snapped in a voice so sibilantly arctic that both James and Peter swallowed and immediately clapped their hands over their mouths. 'In case you'd forgotten, we are standing out here for a reason. Now, who can see what's going on?'

'Er…'

'Well,' James finally said, his eye plastered to the narrow strip of glass before them, 'it looks like Sirius has got them a table….'

'Yeah,' Peter cried, scrabbling on the very tips of his toes so that he too could peer in, 'and Ze's ordering the drinks…'

Remus fought the urge to let go of the shutter and rub the growing ache between his eyes: with these two, running commentary was always a dangerous thing to invite. It didn't help that they were three mostly-grown boys, squashed shoulder to shoulder on a window ledge, peering over the top of a too-short shutter into the Three Broomsticks. If it hadn't been for that "no magic for sneaking when you're sneaking round a friend" rule (he vaguely thought it was No. 487 in the Marauder Book of General Guidelines – Which Are Like Rules But Aren't Really), they could be eavesdropping on Ze and Sirius whilst disguised as trolls out for a drink like normal sneak-thieves. But no, they had to go and follow the rules…

'Oh, and look, he's tucking that bag under the table…'

And there was another exciting update in the land of Sirius Is Acting Funny, And Remus Just Had to Find Out Why. Unfortunately for the young werewolf, he was beginning to accept that – aside from that completely bizarre moment where Ze and Sirius had disappeared into the alley and had a furious conversation in giggles and whispers – nothing so very funny was going on at all. So far they'd trailed the pair to the pet shop, the apothecary, Zonko's, the quidditch supply shop, and the pub. Since they were supposed to be inside to meet Sirius at noon for lunch, they were running out of time to see something that might confirm their suspicions (which, like most suspicions, were really vague imaginings thought up to stave off boredom).

'And it looks like they've both gone for butterbeer,' Peter was whispering in his best SkySport announcer voice.

'And she's taking a sip,' James whispered back in matching tones, 'annnnnnd – yes! She's got it down!'

Remus shook his head in disgust. Honestly, you couldn't take them anywhere. He was just preparing to drop down off the window ledge and enter the pub like a normal person – well, if normal people snuck through the door in the alleyway – when movement from one of the windows above caught his eye. At first he thought it must be curtains, blowing through the open window of one of the inn's overnight rooms. But then he remembered that curtains didn't have arms. And they definitely didn't have – yes, definitely a woman. A vaguely familiar woman. Who wasn't wearing very many clothes.

As he watched she bent forward, a cascade of blond hair trailing over her shoulder, and her face caught in the light. Remus sucked in a breath: no wonder she looked familiar. 'Hey,' he hissed, poking James on the shoulder. 'Look up – you'll never believe it!'

'Look up what?' James repeated, his eye still glued to the window. 'Ze's just about to scratch her – ow! What'd you do that for?'

'Because Mirabelle Maverick is in that window, and she's getting her kit off,' Remus shot back.

James's head whipped round so fast his hair went almost flat from the force of it. 'What? The singer? The one with the massive t-'

'That's the one,' Remus replied, eyes focussed intently on the window one storey up. 'Looks like she's about to go into the bath or something.'

'Bloody hell…' James breathed, sounding a trifle strangled as they watched a white silk robe flutter half out the window. 'I didn't know she was coming to Hogsmead.'

'Um, guys,' Peter squeaked.

Neither of the others noticed him: he'd tried to turn around and look, but being short and slightly uncoordinated, he'd ended up tumbling off the ledge and into the rubbish bin. This was a minor point of contention for Peter - he always ended up in the rubbish bin - but at the moment, he had bigger worries. Such as the fact that someone as famous (and as famously beautiful) as Mirabelle Maverick didn't appear to travel alone.

'Er, really, you might want to –'

'And there goes the bra…' James was saying, practically salivating as he spoke.

'Just a bit more…' Remus was whispering coaxingly.

'Um, James, Remus, this isn't a joke –' Still no response, despite the fact that a very long, very wide shadow had fallen over the three of them. So Peter did the only thing he could: he screwed up his face and, in his loudest voice, shouted, 'Oi!'

Both Remus and James leapt a mile. Mirabelle Maverick paused in her singing but didn't spare a glance out the window. Peter felt around for the lid to his bin and, with as little clattering as possible, slammed it on top over his head. Outside the safe walls of his malodourous little haven he could hear James and Remus rolling over and staring up. He even heard the moment when they both stopped breathing and the fear set in. And he definitely heard them when they shouted:

'TROLL!'

*.*.*.*.*

'Where are they?' Sirius muttered for the fourth or fifth time.

'They're only ten minutes late,' Ze pointed out. 'For them, that's practically early.'

'Yeah, but they were quite keen on meeting here at noon,' Sirius replied, carefully not watching Ze's finger as it traced around the rim of her pint. 'And anyway, they're never late for food.'

Ze shrugged: as far as she was concerned, nothing odd was going on. Well, at least not anything to do with Remus, Peter, and James. Sirius had been acting a bit funny for the last half hour or so, but that was probably just because two third year girls had been trailing his steps, giggling obnoxiously. Finally she and Sirius had retreated to the pub, which was closed to everyone not of age for the day – unusual for the Three Broomsticks, but very helpful. Ze had rather thought Sirius might calm down now that no one was audibly salivating over the way his bum filled out his jeans (she conveniently ignored that she was prone to silently salivating over this very same thing), but she'd been wrong. If anything, he seemed wound even more tightly than he had been when they'd arrived. And she could almost swear she'd caught him staring at her chest. Twice.

'Is that – no,' Sirius slumped back into his seat and reached for his pint. He thought he'd spotted a head of sandy hair ducking behind the bar and then a pair of knees crawling along beneath, but Remus would never crawl through a pub. At least, not if he were sober. And then Sirius heard a loud crash and several shrieked obscenities from the direction of the kitchens, and he knew Remus couldn't possibly be involved in something so chaotic. At least, not all by his onesy. Hmmm…

'If you're ignoring me in hopes I'll go away, just say so,' Ze said in a joking voice, distracting him. Luckily for her, he was so distracted he missed the subtle expression that said she was a bit worried that he might actually say yes.

'Shit – no,' he said quickly, slopping butterbeer all over the table in his haste to get the words out. 'No, s'not that at all,' he continued, clumsily mopping up the spill with his sleeve.

Ze raised her own glass to hide her amusement at his cleaning method: typical bloke. 'Just seeing if you were still in the room,' she joked, passing him a napkin.

Sirius chewed oh his lip for a second and finally said, 'you really were joking though, weren't you? About me wanting you to leave? I mean, you weren't just saying it to make me feel guilty for not paying you enough attention?'

Ze stared at him, completely flummoxed. Aside from the fact that she would never tell him that she was slightly nervous about bothering him a bit much, she really had no comprehension of what he was suggesting. 'Wha – wait – I - you think I'd – okay,' she finally said, shaking herself. 'Let's start that over. You actually think I would ask you some stupid question to make you feel guilty? For not paying me "enough attention"? Merlin's pants, Sirius, all you've done for the last fortnight is show me attention – I've been following you around like a lost puppy. If you want a bit of time to yourself, you shouldn't feel guilty about it.'

Sirius smiled, but couldn't seem to meet her eye. 'Yeah, I know, and that's what I thought you'd mean - say, whatever. It's just that, you know, Grace always used to ask me if I was going off her whenever I'd want to be alone, or to hang out with James and Remus and Peter – it was like me wanting to be around them meant I was tired of being round her, which wasn't the case at all, I just liked hanging out with them –'

Given that the entire speech was made to the tabletop in increasingly frantic tones while Sirius's fingers launched a vociferous shredding attack on the smart little card advertising the bar specials, Ze decided to label this mood as "distracted" and did the only thing she could. 'Ssssh, s'okay,' she said kindly, patting his hand for an excuse to surreptitiously rescue the remains of the fancy little drinks list. 'You just wanted to spend time with your friends, and she couldn't resist being a selfish manipulative cow-'

She broke off immediately and barely resisted the urge to let out an imbecilic "oooops". Far too late she was remembering that, regardless of one's personal feelings, one should never slag off the former girlfriend of a close mate – especially if one isn't sure to what degree said mate still fancies said former girlfriend, or if said mate believes that said former girlfriend may recently have begun a campaign of kind gestures (such as returning lost items) in an effort to atone for previous selfish manipulative cow behaviour. It was, she thought, colossally unfair that such social rules existed.

But rather than sounding ready to give her a bollocking, Sirius seemed faintly bemused. 'She was pretty awful, wasn't she?' he asked. For a moment she breathed easily, thinking that crisis had been averted. And then he added, in much darker tones of self-loathing, 'and I was an idiot for not noticing it.'

Ze took an enormous gulp of butterbeer, suddenly wishing she were anywhere else in the world – because the last place she wanted to be was sitting at a table, lying to Sirius about how his ex-girlfriend hadn't been so bad. And of course she would have to, because that was what you did in these sorts of situations. Boy-girl-snogging situations, she meant. Or, at least, it was what Lily always did for Serena. Which was a pretty crap way of treating a friend, really, lying to her about what a bastard her ex-boyfriend was. But then, it did put a stop to Serena's crying sooner if she thought she'd just been chucked by a nice guy rather than a complete tosspot…

Sirius was not, thankfully, crying. Nor was he looking close to violence, hysteria, or any of the other states Ze associated with Thoughts of a Former Love. He had, however, got ahold of the drinks card again, and now it was nearly half gone, the remnants littering the table like rather soggy, beer-smelling confetti. I am useless, Ze thought desperately as she wracked her brain for something appropriate to say. And then she spotted Rosmerta, the saucy bar maid with the sparkly red shoes, swinging her hips their way. 'Oh, look!' she cried. 'Lunch! I think I'll have another,' she said as Rosmerta slid their plates across the table. Ze glanced at Sirius, who looked as though several pints wouldn't even make a dint in the patina of black thoughts. 'And I think you should too.'

'Oh, don't get up - I'll bring them for you,' Rosmerta grinned, winking at Ze in a conspiratorial way that Ze rather felt she would never be able to master – it had something to do with the Universal Sisterhood of Women Having to Deal With Stroppy Men, but Ze had never really gotten the hang of its rather elitist mores. 'He'll come out of it,' the barmaid whispered as she leaned down under the guise of taking Ze's empty. 'Just give him a bit of a squeeze under the table.'

And with that, she swished off, leaving Ze red to the scalp at the thought of having just received advice on groping her chap out of his foul mood. Not that Sirius was her chap, or that she'd ever wanted to – god, give him a bit of a squeeze? She made a tiny choking noise, stifling hysterical laughter, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

'You alright?' Sirius asked concernedly from across the table, and Ze jumped.

'Yeah, just, um – she stepped on my foot. It hurt, you know, those shoes…' It was the lamest excuse she had ever offered, and she covered the fact by grabbing up the vinegar and liberally coating her chips. Sirius didn't seem to notice. In fact, he didn't seem to even remember that, moments before, he'd been glaring holes through the table. In that most wondrous and mysterious of transformations, he had become a Contented Bloke at the first whiff of fried potato.

For several minutes they ate in companionable silence, Ze's pulse returning to normal as Rosmerta's words gradually faded. Having implemented her usual battle strategy on the plate, she was soon down to a perfect ratio of fist-to-chips and happily licking sauce off her fingers. Expecting Sirius to be similarly occupied, she looked up – and caught him staring. This time, there was no question about it: his eyes were locked dead centre onto her chest. Not that there was much to see – not enough for a topography lesson anyway, not even if you were studying the Salisbury Plain – but she hadn't bothered with a bra this morning and for the first time all day, she was conscious of it.

'Er, Sirius,' she said hesitantly, feeling her cheeks flood with heat.

His eyes snapped up, and she was relieved to see that he too was blushing furiously. 'Um-'

'Er –'

They both paused, Ze trying to think of a clever way to play it off. And then Sirius pointed dead at her and said, 'It's just that you've got a bit of sauce.'

Startled – this was definitely not the explanation she had been expecting – Ze said, 'What?'

'A bit of sauce,' Sirius repeated, still pointing as she stared down at the expanse of shirt. 'Just there –'

'Oh. Ooooh, right.' Oh right indeed – because of course the glob of brown sauce had to be opportunely positioned to stand in as Auxiliary Nipple, should one of her own tire of the job or be taken out in the line of duty. Not, apparently, that garnering stares from Sirius Black was a part of said duties. In a way, Ze felt vaguely disappointed: she'd never been eyed up or even leered at before, and here she was, having a false alarm on her first go. Well aware that her cheeks were discovering new territory in the world of crimson reds, she kept her head down and used her wand to implement a quick scourgify - after all, the last thing she wanted was to be wearing the Auxiliary Nipple for the rest of the day.

Just when she'd gotten herself cleaned up and felt she could possibly pretend to meet Sirius's gaze (though she'd actually just stare over his shoulder), she spotted a now-familiar head of dark curling hair. Seconds before though, she'd been sure she was looking at Colin Cross's face – but he'd turned around so rapidly she couldn't be sure if he'd seen her or not. He was past their table now, just about to take a seat with some of his mates, and Ze felt a rush of relief: he hadn't witnessed the sauce debacle – he was a bona fide safe third party.

'Oi, Colin!' she called, and saw his friends glance at her and then back at him. With a smile he said something to his table and then ambled over to theirs. 'What, going to pretend you didn't see us?' Ze teased, hoping to counter some of the nervous tension hanging between herself and Sirius.

Colin shrugged and smiled. 'I didn't want to interrupt.' Sirius, whose narrow-eyed gaze had discerned a certain surliness in Colin's glance in his direction, felt vaguely smug about this – theirs was a Sirius-Ze table, no Colin Cross invited.

But then Ze ruined it by saying, 'Nah, 'course not. You can join us if you like -we're just waiting on James and the rest.'

Emboldened by her words – which labelled their meal as nothing even remotely private – Colin grinned. 'So that's just the first course then?'

'We're growing quidditch players – we need our protein.'

'I'll keep that in mind,' Colin laughed. Sirius thought about strangling both of them – Colin for flirting so shamelessly, and Ze for encouraging him.

'You haven't seen them have you?' Ze asked suddenly. 'Only they're about a half hour late now –'

'You mean Lupin and Pettigrew?' Colin asked. 'I haven't seen them, but Potter was in the street just as we were coming in. Didn't look like he was planning on stopping though – I haven't seen anyone run that fast since McGonagall caught Wythe cheating on her exam.'

'He was running?' Sirius asked, deciding that maintaining a dignified silence wasn't appropriate if a friend had been spotted in flight. 'Where to?'

'No idea,' Colin shrugged. 'Probably back up to the castle, but from where I was it just looked like "away".' Sirius felt himself bristle at this assertion that James was a coward; Colin must have picked up on it, because he hastened to add, 'I didn't see anybody going after him, so maybe he won, but he'd definitely taken a few hits.'

Ze, oblivious to the currents of male-to-male communication surrounding her, grimaced and glanced at Sirius. 'We should probably go after him – Lily wasn't in the best of moods this morning, and if he's gone after her…''Yeah,' Colin nodded, 'I heard she'd been taking kung fu.'

Ze glanced at him, perplexed, and Sirius hastened to defend James's honour. 'Probably just a misunderstanding over personal space – it happens a lot. You ready?' he added to Ze.

She slid some coins onto the table and stood, grabbing the small bag that held her new arm guard. 'Sorry we're running off again,' she said to Colin, pulling a face. 'But it looks like your mates have got you a pint and a plate coming.'

'Yeah,' Colin grinned, not bothering to look over his shoulder and affirm this, just flashing his dimples at her full force. Sirius fought the urge to growl. 'I'll see you around though?'

'Yeah, definitely – next Herbology lesson?'

'You're on,' he agreed, looking far too sure of himself. 'See you,' he added more generally, and the look he turned toward Sirius was nothing short of smug, practically screaming "who's got her attention now?" Sirius valiantly suppressed the urge to bash his face in and instead managed a tight nod in return.

He then bent and retrieved the bag of knickers from under the table while Ze slipped on her jacket. She had turned toward the door when Sirius caught Colin's gaze running over the discreet label on the bag – a single word, Circe's, embossed in silver copperplate. He saw the squinty blue eyes narrow and then widen in shock before flashing up to stare, gobsmacked, into Sirius's face. There was barely any pause before Sirius cocked a brow naughtily and gave a crooked, limpidly wicked grin that plainly said "you've got her for Herbology, but I'm helping pick out her knickers".

'You coming Sirius?' Ze asked from a few paces away.

Sirius's grin widened, his eyes never leaving Colin Cross's face. 'Right after you, love.'

A deaf man couldn't have missed the innuendo; Cross, whose hearing was nothing short of keen, looked close to apoplexy. Sirius left him standing, jaw gaping, without a trace of his former cockiness. Who's the smug bastard now, eh?

*.*.*.*.*

It was going dark and there was no still no sign of James, Peter, or Remus. They'd searched everywhere, from Zonko's to Madame Puddifoot's to the edges of the Forbidden Forest, and hadn't come across so much as a footprint. And, to make matters all the more enjoyable, Ze had managed to fall directly into a puddle just moments before she and Sirius had, quite literally, run into Grace. Really, Ze had thought, because I need help looking an idiot.

It happened at the very end of their search, as they were calling down the lanes that opened onto the main road back to the castle. Ze had been so busy peering into the hedgerows for signs of male adolescent life that she completely missed the large stone and the pool of brackish water beyond it. One moment she was upright, shouting, and the next she was flat on her face with mud sliding up her nose and her hands and knees stinging and freshly skinned. No sooner had Sirius hauled her up – laughing diabolically at her plight – than Grace came stalking out of the next lane, careening directly into her.

The look Grace had levelled at Ze as her gaze moved from the mud stains on her cashmere jumper to Ze's apologetic face had been vicious enough to strike a basilisk dead. But when Sirius had, with barely an awkward pause, said, 'Oh, hey Grace. Shit Zazzer, is your elbow skint as well? I thought it was just your knee –' the tension had increased tenfold.

'I didn't realise you two were…going places together,' Grace had said with such malicious innocence Ze had barely been able to form words.

'Oh, um – well, we're – not really – I mean – just friends –'

Miraculously, Sirius hadn't even seemed to notice. 'Come on,' he'd said drawing Ze up the path toward the while giving Grace an absent wave. 'Sorry, we've got detention and she's going to need to clean these scrapes up –'

In moments Grace, staring malevolently after them, was obscured by the falling twilight, and Sirius was offering to make her bandages with one of his precious pairs of frilly white knickers. 'Oh, I couldn't let you,' Ze laughed, putting the encounter out of her head and wincing as her knee twinged. 'Besides, we might need to tie them all together as a rope to haul James and Pete and Remus out of some bottomless hole or other.'

Her mention of his fellow Marauders dragged his attention back to the task at hand. 'They've got to be back here – we've looked everywhere else,' Sirius sighed as they approached the torchlit courtyard.

'Right, well I'll just let you find them – me, I'm having a hot shower and finding Lily.'

'Why Lily?'

'You've put me off the matron with your tales of sadistic neglect. And Lily's as good at healing charms as Madame Digweed is, so I'll just see if she can sort me out.'

'You're not going to skive detention, are you?' Sirius asked, suddenly worried she would use her wounds as an excuse to leave him alone. And while a few hours away from her might work wonders for suppressing his libido, he would be horribly bored.

'Course not,' Ze yawned. 'We've got a dragon skeleton to assemble, remember? We'll be there all bloody night as it is, so I won't even hazard being late. See you in a bit?'

'Yeah,' he murmured as she ambled toward the girls' side. Most everyone else was at supper or returning from the village, and he hoped she could find Lily before they were due to meet Filch.

With a yawn of his own, Sirius tapped up the steps to the boys' side, throwing open the door to the sevenths' only to discover that it was completely empty – no Moony, no Wormtail, no Prongs. Not even a Clive, although he hadn't really been expecting one. Telling himself that he would check the Map to be sure they weren't hanging by their toes from the Astronomy Tower, Sirius dropped the Circe's bag onto his four poster and flopped backward onto the bed. His weight bounced the mattress, sending the bag over sideways and spilling out a heap of tawdry knickers. And, of course, the voluminous white drawers he was allegedly so fond of.

For a long moment Sirius convinced himself that he wasn't interested, that he had rather go take a shower, or even a nap. But finally curiosity won out, and he gave in to the desire to look. Sitting up he sifted through the pile of fabric – some shiny, most lacey, all see-through – and discovered all over again why going to Circe's had been a bad idea. These pants were designed to make men think naughty things. Their entire purpose on the planet was – just as Ze had so cleverly pointed out – to give a woman the confidence of knowing that any man lucky enough to see her in them would be unable to deny her slightest whim. And they didn't even have to be filled with smooth, soft flesh to be scintillating – they were doing quite a bit for him just sitting there on his bed.

Or, most of them were. There were actually a few bits that he couldn't quite puzzle out. For instance, he knew that, in theory, the one with the ribbon and little lace panels like a skirt was designed to hold up stockings. In theory the stockings attached somehow and refrained from falling down the legs. He just couldn't figure out what the bloody hell the little stretchy bits on the sides were for. Holding the contraption up and spreading it out, he tried to situate it in relation to his own waist, tugging on the stretchy bits and trying vainly to get it right.

'Have you se – oh, bloody hell!'

Sirius nearly crippled himself jerking round toward the door to see Clive standing there, frozen, his eyes bulging nearly out of his head as he took in the view of Sirius struggling to squeeze himself into a set of very frilly suspenders. With predictable comedy of errors timing, the elastic bit chose that moment to pop, snapping Sirius smartly on the hand. 'OUCH!'

'Fuck!' Clive shouted back, seeming to come out of his daze. 'I – um – I – well – looks – um, I'll just let you have…a moment with yourself, yeah? Okay. Yeah,' he repeated, and turned so fast on his heel Sirius caught himself listening to see if Clive had tumbled down the stairs to increase the speed of his escape.

And then, of course, he realised that he'd just been caught sizing up women's lingerie. 'Fuck!' he shouted, hurling the lace contraption – why the hell did he need to know how it worked, he never wore stockings – across the room and dropped back onto his bed. He wanted this day to be over. No, cut that, he wanted this day to never have happened, to be wiped from records and memories and the great Ledger of Sins You Will be Held Accountable For that floated somewhere in the ether.

But instead he was stuck rolling over on his four poster, staring at the ceiling and wishing he'd been born a crustacean – perhaps a lobster, one of the freshwater ones they had in Australia. That would definitely be the life: living in a lagoon of pure blue water, loads of sunshine and plenty of gorgeous Aussie birds in bikinis swimming round you. Of course, you'd have the claws and those weird whiskers, but was that really too much price to pay? For an escape from the mortification and horrific pain of daily life as a seventeen year old boy? Definitely not.

And then he glanced down at the pile of knickers and remembered that he would be spending the evening alone with Ze in a dimly lit room. Suddenly a lobster seemed too complicated – after all, lobsters reproduced, which meant they had sex, which meant they thought about having sex – He would just have to be something else, something that never, ever had sex or thought about sex or wanted to have sex –

With a tortured shout he slammed his fist into the bedpost and went to take a very cold shower.


	21. A Bone to Pick

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 21: A Bone to Pick

That was much better (there was nothing like having clean hair, after all) and now all he had to do was get dressed and- AAAAGGGHHHHH! Sirius slammed the bathroom door shut and counted to three. And then he opened it again, very, very slowly, with one eye barely cracked.

Oh God.

It was still there –

Before him, in the middle of the room, stood the Ghost of Disco Past. Except that disco didn't quite cover it. It was more…eclectic than that. And, muzzy as he was on these details, Sirius rather thought no self-respecting diva would pair blue suede platform boots with…well, anything. Then there were the gold velvet trousers with legs flared so wide they gave the impression of a hoop skirt. The shirt was paisley, although the term was a shade too mild for what was going on – chaotic, magenta, turquoise and sartorial nightmare would all have been more apt descriptions. A wide band of silken cloth wrapped around the apparition's head like the bastard offspring of a turban and a war bandage, complete with a gold brooch in the shape of a snail.

'Remus?' Sirius said slowly, 'ah…what'chu wearing?'

Remus hobbled around to face him, and Sirius winced as he came face-to-rhinestone with an enormous pair of violently purple sunglasses, which obscured most of Remus's face. They couldn't quite manage to cover up the swollen, split lip however, and since one lens was broken out Sirius could see quite a nice start on a blackened eye as well. 'Oh hey,' Remus lisped, peering at Sirius through the swollen slit of his eye.

'What…' Sirius began, and then trailed off, realising that there just wasn't any conversational precedent to help him along. All he could do was stare at Remus through the jagged edges of his shattered sunglasses, and wonder.

'Troll,' Remus said slowly, as though from a great distance.

Sirius hastily looked around – but really, you could usually smell them before they got close enough to hit you, so he didn't think – 'Wait! You mean this,' he gestured to Remus's pummelled visage, 'is because of a troll?'

'Mmmmghgpph,' said a voice from the door, and Sirius whirled round to see James, leaning heavily on Peter, trudging into the room.

'They're pretty bad off,' Peter said, shifting James off his shoulder and watching as his taller friend tumbled backward onto his bed. 'It happened hours ago, but we hid in the Shack and waited for dark to come back to the school. We were,' he gulped, 'afraid it would follow us.'

'Follow you?' Sirius repeated blankly.

'Well, er, it wasn't very happy, you see…' Peter trailed off, adjusting his belt. Sirius was momentarily distracted – were those guns? Actual, holstered, painfully shiny six-shooter guns? And that belt buckle – it was bloody huge, and was it – yes! There was long-horned cow engraved on it! That wasn't the main problem though – Peter was. Or, rather, the fact that someone like Peter Pettigrew could never hope to pull off a cowboy disguise. There was just something about him that refused to swagger. Not to mention he couldn't herd livestock for shite.

'Okay,' Sirius said slowly, matching up Peter's fringed vest and spurs with Remus's phenomenally hideous ensemble. 'I think you'd better tell me why you're wearing those clothes.'

There was a moment of fraught silence, interrupted only by James's unintelligible muttering, during which Peter shot Remus an accusing, fearful glance. And then Remus said in a very slow and overly innocent voice: 'What clothes?'

'Oh come on – "what clothes" my arse. This isn't the Adventures of Elton John."

'I don't look like Elton John!' Peter cried indignantly.

'That was aimed at the Dancing Queen here,' Sirius explained, jerking his thumb at Remus.

'Did you know,' James said, sitting up quite suddenly and lucidly, 'that some people think he's actually a Muggle?'

The other three exchanged a glance. 'I think he means Elton,' Peter whispered helpfully out of the side of his mouth.

'Of course,' James continued. 'It's mostly Muggles that think it…stupid gits.' And with that, he toppled backwards onto the bed again, and resumed his glassy-eyed staring at the ceiling.

'He's been like that,' Peter explained, 'for hours. I think it happened when the troll hit him with the crate of old pickling jars.'

'Hit him with a crate of- alright, just go back a bit. Where did you find the troll?' Sirius asked. Remus and Peter shuffled their feet and mumbled to the floor for several seconds. Sirius caught a glance at the clock and stifled a snarl. 'Bugger,' he said. 'We're due for detention in twenty minutes. What the hell happened?!'

The command in his tone was too much for Peter, who jumped and cried, 'We were hiding and it came out and thumped us for looking at her naked!' Remus glared, and Peter let out a mighty squeak before clapping both hands over his mouth.

Sirius stared, utterly gobsmacked, into Peter's wide, rolling eyes. 'Hiding? Naked? This doesn't have anything to do with Lily Evans, does it –'

'NO!' Remus and Peter thundered together – or, they would have, if Peter could have got his hands away from his mouth. It came out as more of a "Nghpmh!", but Sirius got the point.

'Then who,' he asked very slowly and clearly, 'were you staring at?'

'Er, well…'

'Mirabelle Maverick,' Remus sighed, removing his sunglasses in a graceful sweep, and emoting with his one good eye. 'She's staying at the inn in the village – we just happened to catch sight of her in her window and, well…'

'We think he was Security,' Peter whispered, making a few hand gestures and then a horrible face to illustrate that he was talking about the troll.

'You got thumped by a Security troll because you were ogling Mirabelle Maverick through a window?' Sirius surmised in tones of deepest disgust. And then: 'Merlin, I miss all the good stuff.'

'Well, we really only got to see her tits,' Remus shrugged. 'The rest remains a mystery.'

Sirius sighed. 'Still…'

'Well, you looked like you were having a nice time -,' Peter said consolingly, his words cutting off at the end as he doubled over. Remus was innocently removing his elbow from Peter's abdomen when Sirius turned back around.

'What do you mean, I looked like I was –'

'Oi, what's that on your bed?' Remus asked suddenly, his eye catching on something very bright and purple, clashing violently with the crimson duvet.

'NOTHING!' Sirius shouted as he dove round Remus and landed facedown on the mattress, covering as much of the fabric beneath him as possible.

'But it looked like –'

'It isn't!' Sirius practically bellowed over him. And then, 'maybe we should take James to hospital?'

'Yeah,' Peter said, peering down at their fourth companion. 'He hasn't said anything in a bit, and he stopped twitching a couple of minutes ago…'

'Definitely a case for the matron,' Sirius agreed, still spread-eagled over his bed. 'You two take him down to her, and I'll explain to Filch that he won't be coming for detention.'

Remus winced. 'Good luck.'

'You too,' Sirius replied solemnly, and they all thought of Madame Digweed, and winced again.

'D'you think she'd believe that he fell out of the owlry?' Peter asked.

'Again?' Remus replied. 'Not likely. Better to say the Whomping Willow got him.'

'Again?' Peter parroted.

'Er, good point,' Remus sighed. 'Come on – we'll think of something. Better get dressed mate,' he added to Sirius over his shoulder as he and Peter hoisted a comatose James between them. 'I know detention's casual, but I don't think showing up in a towel would win you any points.'

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius was almost late. It wasn't that he'd taken the time to comb his hair or make sure his socks matched – it was that he'd spent nearly the entire twenty minutes trying to find a place to hide those bloody knickers. Somehow, stuffing them into his trunk hadn't seemed the best idea. After all, everyone snooped through trunks – likewise wardrobes, bedclothes and beneath the mattress. He'd finally charmed them invisible and shoved them behind a handy loose stone at the base of his bed. Hardly ideal, but much, much better than leaving them out where someone might see them.

Skating into the hall just as Filch arrived – sneering, and minus Mrs Norris – Sirius slid to a halt, panting from his run. 'Where's James?' Ze murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

''Ere now,' Filch said, at exactly the same moment. 'Where's yon gangly bugger?'

Since Wythe was already skulking (no one skulked better than Wythe) in a corner, they could only assume he meant James. 'Er, well, you see,' Sirius began.

'Iffen 'e's not here in the next five seconds –'

'He's in hospital, see,' Sirius said rather desperately, because Filch had produced a pair of manacles and was looking sickeningly gleeful.

''ospital?' Filch repeated, as though he'd just had all his Christmases stolen at once. 'Why?'

'Well…' Sirius rolled his eyes back, hoping that a suitable lie was stamped on the inside of his head. No such luck. 'He was attacked by a troll and then spent the evening in the Shrieking Shack,' he said as earnestly as he could.

As predicted, Filch snorted disbelievingly. 'What a load of rubbish. I'll be off to Madame Digweed as soon as I've got you lot sorted. Black, Meridian, it's back to the skeleton for you.' Ze and Sirius heaved a sigh as Filch turned, positively cackling, to Wythe. 'And you, my pet, you're going to have all sorts of fun – just you follow me.'

'We'll just be…going…then…' Ze said as Filch stomped off down the corridor with a lantern, a glowering Wythe skulking after him. 'Think we could skive off?' she asked Sirius hopefully.

'Not if we don't want to spend the rest of the night in chains. Come on,' he added with a sigh.

Ze shrugged, and they ambled through the corridors. Finally, when it was clear that no explanation was forthcoming, she cleared her throat. 'So, what really happened?' Sirius gave her a blank look. 'James,' she said, jogging his memory. 'Troll? Shrieking Shack?'

'Oh,' Sirius said. 'Funny you should mention that…'

*.*.*

Three hours later, arms aching, fingers cramping, minds ready to explode, they sorted through the last hundred or so fragments of the skeleton. The candles were burning down slowly, the subtle scent of beeswax wafting in the air, and at some point a soft, steady rain had begun to drum on the windows. It was almost cosy – if you ignored the fact that they were assembling a massive dragon skeleton, complete with demonically grinning skull.

Filch had stopped by and sourly surveyed their progress, clearly displeased that they'd managed to get so far. Sirius had asked about James, and only gotten a grunting reply that seemed affirmative – although whether Filch was affirming that James was in fact in hospital, or that James was in fact alive was anyone's guess. Finally the greasy little man had stomped off, leaving them in peace. Not long after that conversation had more or less ceased, a fact that Ze had been ready to label a blessing. Sirius was being weird. Not just off, or a trifle odd, but downright weird. He kept mumbling to himself. And twitching. She could almost swear he was berating himself for something under his breath – but if she asked what it was, he invariably jumped and said "nothing!" as though she'd caught him doing something naughty.

Not that she had. As far as she could tell he wasn't doing anything even remotely nefarious – a rather unusual situation, considering "nefarious" was more or less the Marauders' watchword, right after "mischievous". He didn't even appear to be Plotting. But she did have the strange feeling that he was watching her. It was stupid, she knew, because whenever she glanced up his eyes were elsewhere, but she would swear that – well – that he was staring. And it was definitely a stare – not just a glance, or a look, or a furtive peep. Ze had always thought that narrative descriptions such as "she could feel his gaze, penetrating every layer of her being" were a complete load of rubbish, but she was beginning to rethink her position. Because she could feel Sirius watching her.

It didn't feel penetrating though – it felt like heat. As though something warm were brushing across her skin – pleasant at first, given the draft of your average Highland castle, but gradually building, just the way it did in the summer when you sprawled on the grass in the park. Because sooner or later what started as soft summer warmth becomes scorching summer heat and your skin fills with it, thick and stifling, until you're ready to burst…

Of course, she'd thought he was staring at her in the pub, and it had turned out to be a great blot of sauce on her tit…

No, some errant part of her whispered, this time we're right. He's watching, he's looking…he can't bloody stop! And, listening to this oddly persuasive little voice, Ze glanced furtively up through her eyelashes, and saw Sirius's gaze fastened hungrily – there was really no other word for it – on her hands. My hands, she thought, a trifle offended. And then she realised that she had just picked up one of the long cylindrical portions of the tibia, and was running her fingers along it, checking for nicks…. So that was how the game was played.

Even the cleanest of minds could draw a parallel between the bone she was holding and certain portions of the male anatomy – and Ze's mind would never have ranked among the cleanest about. And given the way Sirius's eyes were following every brush of her fingers, his mind wasn't quite tidied up either. Which started her thinking. And for someone who'd been oblivious for the past week, she managed to do some fairly productive cogitating. Moving at close to lightening speed, her brain began regurgitating little vignettes from the past several days, presenting her with the recent epidemic of Brainless Bloke, the nervousness, the mumbling, the inability to concentrate on anything at all... Then the small dots in the narrative began to connect. Like the fact that it was Remus, Peter, Sirius, James, Rob, Zeke, and Allister who were acting like guppies left out of the tank. Not Clive. Not Colin. Definitely not the rest of the school. Just the idiot arses who'd made a bet that they could give up sex of all sorts and in all ways. Which meant that – she rapidly counted the days up – they were all exactly a week into not having laid a hand on anyone, including themselves.

Clearly they needed to build a bit of stamina.

But the main question was how the hell had she missed it? How?! It wasn't as though they were subtle – not with the amount of sighing and staring and nervous, red-eared shifting beneath desks whenever a girl walked by. And then it slowly began to dawn on her that, when she said "girl", she was one of the number. James had walked into a suit of armour just yesterday, and up until now she'd thought he'd spotted Lily somewhere. She certainly hadn't credited herself with the disturbance – even if she had bent down to retrieve her dropped Charms notes directly in front of him just moments before it happened. But now, well…

It was absurd to feel pleased. Positively stupid. And yet – and yet – she had made it! She was a girl, an officially, unquestionably, subconsciously recognised girl . Even her own friends thought so. Oh, she doubted she'd been garnering the attention various others had, but they had noticed – noticed that she bent and stretched and smiled just like the rest of the female population. Sirius had noticed.

And as quickly as that thought appeared, the fragile bloom of elation withered. She was probably being an enormous idiot, taking things entirely out of proportion and twisting them around to her own purposes. After all, she hadn't really got much of what guys looked for. No long hair to toss, no hips to sway – certainly no tits to shake. Her legs were long enough, she supposed, but they were the legs of someone who was more distance athlete than shapely dancer, corded with muscle and – like the rest of her – stringy. With a sigh she glanced up, and caught Sirius's eyes so tightly latched onto her chest she rather thought she should feel a vise-like grip. And then he licked his lips. Not a slow, sultry sweep designed to seduce, but a quick, desperate darting of the tongue, pure nerves and desperation. Well fuck me rigid and hang me in the Tate.

Sirius had definitely noticed.

Because unless he was staring off into space and dreaming of the world's tastiest chocolate frog, that quick little gesture had been over her. This, said the persuasive voice rather wickedly, calls for a test. Yes, yes, a test, she would just – Ze paused, the fact that she had absolutely not experience with this sort of thing stopping her up short. Er….what exactly did one do? She wasn't asking him point blank if he was ogling her – last time she'd done that, her visual allure had been put down to her tendency to wear her lunch. And though she was hardly an expert, she had a faint inkling that one didn't play the seductress in an ancient pair of jeans and a much-abused t-shirt…even if both had recently been shrunk down to a more fitted sizing. Then there was the fact that Ze had no idea how to flirt. She had a hazy notion that giggling was involved, and perhaps witty banter. Well, that was going to take a few pints, then –

Wait! Hadn't she made James walk into a suit of armour – complete with two-headed battleaxe – just by bending over? Yes! Wellll…alright, so it was possible (probable, her treacherous common sense corrected) that there had been something else on James's mind at the time, and that she'd just compounded matters. But still, it could work. After all, Sirius was certainly in a state of distraction, if that long, uneven sigh was any indication. She hazarded another glance up, and found him, slack-jawed and positively panting. Maybe that's not lust, an uneasy voice said. But I've got him panting! Ze shot back desperately. Don't squeaky rubber balls do the same to dogs? the voice replied, sounding much more firm. And should he really be all sweaty? Positively peaky looking…

Ze started to say "belt it", and realised that she was talking to herself. Inside her own head. About panting and rubber balls. Oh sod this for a lark she thought, and with her elbow sent something that looked like a massive knuckle spinning off the table and skidding across the floor. 'Ooops,' she said as innocently as she could. Without bothering to look at Sirius, she turned, located the bone in the shadows, and bent forward at the waist. Behind her she heard a sort of gargling noise, followed by an inarticulate "gghhghhhghhg", and finished off with a decidedly tortured moan.

And that's one for the home side…

Straightening slowly, she heard a massive intake of breath and a muffle crack, as though someone had just snapped in half the bit of ancient osseous tissue clutched in his hot, sweaty hands…She couldn't stop the smug smile that eased across her face. In some way she couldn't define, she felt distinctly pleased – and distinctly female. She'd done that – she'd made it happen, caused that (however brief) gap in sanity and muscular control. It was nothing to winning a quidditch match, but it was still quite a rush. She pivoted around, holding the bone innocently in her hand, shooting Sirius an unintentionally sultry glance from beneath her lashes. Her mouth opened to make some amusingly asinine comment, but her eyes snagged on something and stopped her brain from getting any further.

Talk about getting a girl's attention…

*.

Sirius had expected death to be quick. Sort of a rapid montage of memories flashing before his eyes, or a candle snuffing out – at least, that was how novelists were always describing it, and those people had to know something, didn't they? But it wasn't quick, and so far the only thing rapidly flashing before his eyes had been a string of fantasies, each more explicit than the last. As for things snuffing out, well, the only sort of candle Sirius would equate his, er, "situation" with was the sort that burned for an annoyingly long time before exploding in a few glorious bursts. Oh fuck, why'd he thought that? No more explosions. No more candles. No more thoughts –

It was Ze's fault. It was completely, totally her fault. It had been her fault since this morning, when she'd flung knickers in his face, since she'd laughed at him, since she'd decided not to wear a bloody bra! God, how unfair was that? He'd spent months - months - learning how to get what he considered to be nothing better than a bit of lace-trimmed, spring-loaded weaponry off of Grace's chest, weeks perfecting the unsnapping, days getting the knack of lowering the straps and hours figuring out how not to tear the stupid buggers and now, and now, he discovered there were girls out there who didn't bother to wear the confounded things?! Was there no honour in the world? Was there no justice?

And could they please, please keep Ze from ever putting one of the damnable things on?

Not that he'd needed another distraction to add to the growing list, but Sirius was fairly certain every fantasy he had from this point on was going to start with Ze Meridian, in an ancient gray t-shirt, on a chilly autumn day. There would be chocolate involved, and a well-timed rain shower, and possibly even skipping rope. It really didn't matter. He'd be happy just to sit in the pub and try not to miss his mouth with his fork, or ram anything overly sensitive into the table. Just as long as she was sitting there, in front of him, with a hint of a smile and bit of a visible chill…

Of course, he was going to have to kill Colin Cross immediately.

There was no other thing for it – he simply couldn't have that Hufflepuff fuckwit undressing her with his eyes. From now on, Ze would stay completely away from Cross – and every other smarmy tosser who just wanted to get her out of her clothes. Stupid randy gits. Doing Cross in as publicly and painfully as possible would solve the problem: once the rest of the school had seen that no was to think about possibly, maybe, you know, just-for-a-minute-because-it-really-would-be-just- harmless-conjecture even imagining Ze with a hint of libidinous intent, well, his life would be marginally simpler. After all, she was rather naïve when it came to these things, and if it weren't for Sirius watching her arse – er, watching out for her arse, she would end up lustily ravaged and heartbroken. Mmm, lustily ravaged….

Sirius stifled a primitive growl as Ze's long, golden fingers encircled a shaft of dragon bone roughly the circumference of her slender wrist. They traced delicately, teasingly down the length of the fragment and Sirius dumbly tried to think of nothing – anything…and of course settled on bunnies, the fluffiest, dinkiest, most oversexed animals on the planet. That proved it then – the universe did have a sense of humour. A nasty one.

Sirius had tried. He really had. He'd tried to think of pure, clean, non-sexual things. But after he'd managed to find a serious kink in Professor Binns' lecturing style, he'd given all up for lost. Although he didn't think he could rightfully be blamed for Binns' unusual attachment to phrases such as "explosive release of tension" and "massive stone erection"…even if he was talking about siege engines and druid monuments. Clearly the ghost needed to find a willing medium – preferably one who liked a good dose of goblin history in lieu of foreplay. So he'd moved on to methods of distraction: James, Remus, Peter and the Troll (bloody hell, if that didn't sound like the worst children's book ever written…), the Tale of the Missing Socks, even a desperate ploy to get her to talk about dull, boring things such as the last thirty books she'd borrowed from the library.

When he'd found himself getting turned on by the way her lips formed the words "Xaglaxites' Treatise on Medicinal Bacteriae and Fungae", he'd decided it would be much more humane just to bludgeon himself to death with one of the larger leg bones.

And now here they were, steeped in silence, with Zazzer's fingers tracing breath-stealing patterns over the surface of what must have once been a dragon's shin. Sirius blamed the room. He blamed the candles with their soft, flickering light and their warm golden glow. He blamed the rain sluicing down the windows, the gentle patter of the drops against the glass and the seductive tracery of the drops as they wound their way down. He even cursed the stones, their damp, musty odour making him lean toward his companion, trying to catch the scent he'd inhaled in the corridors earlier, the scent of Ze, freshly showered and smelling of Christmas. He couldn't be blamed. It really wasn't his fault. He was just a seventeen year old guy who'd sworn off sex and everything that went with it…and then gone down to spend the evening in a small, dimly lit room with a girl who exuded something so potently attractive he should have been issued protective body armour before he'd been sent in.

How could he be so stupid? How? He'd known it was a bad idea. Even a quarter of an hour spent under showers of water a few scant degrees from being ice cubes hadn't cooled him down. And now here he was, unable to breathe – much less think – thanks to the seductress across from him. He didn't care if he sounded like some mucky novel with a bare-chested Scotsman on the front – that's exactly what she was. A seductress. She was even wearing red, albeit in the form of an ancient t-shirt, washed soft and thin and oh-so-scintillating when he considered the probable lack of undergarments beneath it. Alright, so she most likely had on a camisole, and there was that cardi, but really, she was as good as naked…

He couldn't stop the thoughts, couldn't stop his entire brain short-circuiting as he stared at her body, feeling absolutely no need to acknowledge that her clothes were there. And then he was dimly aware of something clattering across the floor, of her voice murmuring, of the candles flickering as she began to move…To turn, to bend, to reach -

Sirius tried to say a prayer of thanks and issue a sob of deprivation at the same time, and ended up with a noise reminiscent of an asthmatic orangutan. Not that he noticed. All mental activity ceased as the last of the blood left his brain, leaving his optic nerves replaying the bend and reach over, and over, and over…

There was a distant snapping noise, and the nerves in his fingers tried to inform his brain that the thing in his hands was now several things, all much smaller and pointier, but his brain smiled lugubriously and replied in gibberish. After all, there were much, much more important biological functions taking place at the moment. In the distance a lilting voice said, 'Sirius?'

After a few moments he realised that somewhere in the haze before him Ze was speaking. 'Mmmmmm?'

'Are you going camping?' Ze's voice, laced with slumberous amusement, asked.

The rear guard of his intellect made an attempt, but succeeded only in rousing a very perplexed expression.

''Cos you're pitching one hell of a tent.'

%* £

In searching for the proper adjective to modify the noun in "Sirius's expression", Ze did a few stretches alongside "confused", trotted past "surprised", hit her stride around "embarrassed", and was at a flat sprint by the time she reached "abject, unadulterated mortification with a side of horror and a wee dollop of lightheadedness on top". Which wasn't an adjective at all, but was much closer to the truth. In all honesty, she didn't think she'd ever seen anyone so – so – so-

For his part, Sirius was experiencing a sensation akin to astral projection. Which is to say, his conscious mind was making frantic attempts to desert his body, and – despite the emphatic arguments found in very serious books with titles like "Magick Wands and Stones of Power" – his body was having none of it, since the whole thing was a load of bloody rubbish. The good news was that blood was coursing back toward his face in order to supply ammunition for the tropical sunset that someone kind might term a faint blush. This did not, however, change the fact that Ze had just spotted him with an erection to rival Professor Binns' beloved druid monuments.

He'd spun around before he'd quite realised it, and was relieved to know that some of the blood making its way back toward his head was actually going to his brain. Not that the damned thing had been much use in the last few minutes. A few seconds later, he realised that said brain was attempting to get back in his good graces by issuing a garbled explanation via his mouth, while ordering his hands to make some hasty adjustments to some rather tender parts in the name of dignity.

'I ate these magic beans –'

'Sirius –'

'Actually, they were magic squash-'

'Sirius –'

'And I kept one in my pocket –'

'Sirius, I don't – '

'I wasn't perving on you. Okay, I was, but it was just for a second –'

'Sir-'

'Okay, a minute –'

'Sir-'

'Okay, all day! But that's all I'm admitting – '

'Siriu-'

'Alright, so I'm a perverted bastard who can't keep his eyes to himself, but honestly there's a really good explanation –'

'Sirius I – '

'I just can't tell you, but I swear it's really good, and you'd believe it, you know, if I could tell you –'

'SIRIUS!'

'It's even better than magic squash, I swear –' and he quite suddenly he stopped talking, because she'd yelled his name and it was echoing all around the room, bouncing like a bludger between the stones. 'Er…' he said when the echoes had died.

'I know about the bet.'

Talk about getting a chap's attention…

*.

'The – you – the – you – bet – know – the – you – bet - you know about the bet?.'

Ze nodded, her lips pressed tight together. Sirius had the unnerving idea that she was trying very hard not to laugh. It didn't help that when she'd dropped those fateful words he'd whipped around so fast he would have been seeing stars even if ninety percent of the blood in his body had been where it was supposed to be.

'You know about the bet?'

'Yes.'

'You know about the bet?'

'Yes.'

'You know about the –'

'Yes, we've covered that bit! I know. Your secret is out. Whhooooo,' she finished off, waving her hands about dramatically and rolling her eyes. 'Honestly.'

'Who told you?' he asked narrowly. ''Cos no one's been booted yet, and if you tell you get - that smug bastard.'

'Yes, well, don't let Clive's mum hear you say that – I daresay she's got a bit of a temper when it comes to questioning her virtue.'

'He told you? He just told you?'

'Weelllll, he might have had a bit of prodding. But really, you were so obvious – I mean, you couldn't have been more conspicuous if you'd had shirts done up!'

'I can't believe he told you.'

'You didn't swear him to silence, so it's your own bloody fault,' Ze responded promptly and without sympathy. 'And anyway, it's an idiotic bet. No sex? No touching, no kissing, no wanking? You're teenaged boys Sirius – how else are you going to spend your evenings?'

'Er…studying?' Sirius suggested.

Ze snorted. 'Yeah, 'cos you've soooo much experience with that.'

'Well its not as though you're helping!' he shot back, suddenly angry.

'Me? What have I done – besides join you for an oh-so-romantic evening spent sorting bones?'

'Sorting bones? You call fondling phallic symbols and shoving your bum in the air sorting bones!?'

'Well there's one bone I won't be sorting, and that's yours – now fix your damn trousers before you have your own eye out,' Ze snapped.

Half of Sirius wanted to take a moment to explore the dark alleys of Ze and bone sortage, but the other half resolutely stood it down. 'Look,' he said, rubbing his hands through his hair, 'I'm really sorry, okay? I'm just on edge a bit, and, well, you know…'

Ze sighed and, much to Sirius's surprise, circled the table, coming to lean against the edge next to him. 'I shouldn't have picked at you,' she said at last, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear.

'And I shouldn't have been ogling you,' he replied, equally contrite and still more-than-slightly hot.

Ze shrugged. 'It took me a bit to figure it out, but that last – bending over and all – that was to see if you really were.'

Sirius felt the blush, quite impossibly, intensify. 'You – you mean you weren't trying before?'

'Er,' Ze said going a bit pink, her eyes darting around madly. 'No…not as such. I didn't actually – I mean – well, I thought earlier today, when were in the pub, that maybe you were, um, well, you know – that you were looking…But then it was just that sauce on my shirt and –'

'I conjured it,' Sirius blurted.

'What?' Ze asked blankly.

'The – the sauce,' he stammered to explain. 'I conjured it. I was definitely staring at your ti- er, your, um – '

'Tits,' Ze finished, sounding faintly amused.

'Yes, those would be the two,' Sirius admitted with a faint smile of his own, 'and you caught me, and I just did it before I could even think. My wand was in my pocket and I just…did it. Sorry,' he added, genuinely meaning it. 'I just, well, I didn't want you to think I'm a total perv.'

'Even though you are?'

The flush went well beyond the roots of his hair, possibly causing a pink bloom of embarrassment in most of his internal organs. 'Well, yes. But please don't take it personally,' he added quickly, his mouth speeding on.

'What?'

For a moment Sirius would have sworn that Ze had looked affronted, but his survivalist mouth was ploughing forward without him. 'Don't take it personally,' he repeated. 'I mean, yes, I was leering at you and completely enjoying the fact that you weren't wearing a bra – by the way, you should feel free to forego those any time you like – but it was just - I'm just – I'm gagging for it,' he managed to get out. 'Completely sprung. I'd probably bugger a quidditch goal if it were the right fit – which, thankfully, it isn't,' he added quickly. 'But honestly, everywhere I look there are these bodies – girls' bodies – that are just…fascinating. Gorgeous. And I can't stop looking. One week and I'm swallowing my own tongue because the bird in front of me has rolled her skirt a bit at the waist and I can see the skin above her knees. And the girl next to her has this really fitted jumper on, see, and so then I have to take it in, and by the time I'm finished processing that the bell's gone and I can't stand up without embarrassing myself. It isn't you, really,' he said earnestly. 'It's just nature. My nature.'

'Oh,' Ze managed to say.

And then she set herself on autopilot, nodding and murmuring as Sirius continued to explain that his reaction was completely physiological and that even Dorcas was looking a bit better than usual. "Nothing personal" he kept saying, and Ze felt her new-found confidence crumbling. It was stupid, of course, to base any sort of self-worth on the opinions of others. She knew that. Everyone knew that. And yet….if you couldn't rely on your friends to appreciate your attributes, how else did you know they were appreciable? If there was nothing bloody personal about the way Sirius couldn't keep his eyes off of her, if he'd never noticed her enough to stare before he'd taken a vow of idiocy – er, celibacy – then that made her unattractive, didn't it? Oh, she didn't mean that she wasn't decent looking – just that she wasn't attractive, that she lacked that certain something boys would follow down corridors and walk into stationary bits of mediaeval weaponry for. In short, that Sirius had never noticed her, because she'd never been worth noticing.

She had liked this much better when he'd been moaning helplessly with his gaze glued to her ass. Oddly enough, it hadn't seemed quite so humiliating then.

You've never cared what any boy has thought, the cool, collected voice of reason pointed out. You've never needed anyone's eyes to follow you, telling you you're worth watching – never needed a rapt audience to make something worth doing. Yes, she wanted to reply, but this is Sirius. And serious, too. Which just made it horribly, stupidly funny. Because she was coming to discover that, while she didn't care what everyone thought, she did care what someone thought, and that someone happened to be staring soulfully down at her, perfect lips forming words she would rather not have to hear.

Not that she fancied him, she hastened to assure herself. God no – she definitely didn't, it was just that – that – that –

'…so if I bang you up against a wall and shove my tongue down your throat, it'll just be a freak act of hormones and you've got my full permission to knee me in the nadgers,' Sirius finished off with the sincerity of a confidence man wearing a vicar's collar.

'Right,' Ze said on a breath. 'I'll keep that in mind. But, er, wouldn't you rather do something about it?'

'About what?' he asked blankly.

Ze fought the urge to roll her eyes and say "everything you've just been expounding on that I was ignoring while I moped over the fact that you don't really want me". Instead she said, 'all this excess, um, energy. Running,' she added, when it was clear he wasn't following. 'We went running yesterday, and you were fairly normal last night. At least, there weren't any stiffies playing Doorknocker with the table that I noticed.' And then she grinned, because the blush – which had been slowly abating – came back full force.

'Can we, er, can we just…completely forget about that?' he asked in a barely audible voice.

'Not a chance,' Ze said cheerfully. 'I haven't gone so far as to take a survey, of course, but something tells me the average bloke doesn't come quite as close to eye level as you do. It's not the sort of thing you forget in a hurry,' she added, relishing the way his jaw sagged at the naughty words. 'It's a wonder you don't walk tilted forward –'

'Enough,' he groaned, covering his flaming face. 'Okay, you've had your go- it was hilarious, poor Sirius getting one up in full view. Now can we please finish this so that I can crawl underneath a rock and die of shame?'

At this, Ze dropped the cheeky comment she'd had at the ready, and had to fight not to give him a hug. Sirius looked so very miserable that it was all she could do not to cuddle him, no matter how inexpert at it she might be. 'I'm just taking the piss Sirius,' she said very quietly, putting her hand on his arm. Her jerked slightly at the contact, but didn't shake her off. 'A few days ago you'll recall that I had an alien life-form growing off of my head and you helped me out with it. You laughed at me, but you helped. So I owe you. And even if I didn't, I'd be more than willing to drag you out of bed and run you until you're too knackered to stand.'

Sirius uncovered his face and stared down at her. For a moment heat flashed in his gaze, and Ze didn't have the instinct to know that it was because Sirius was imagining just what she could do to have him too knackered to stand. But then he nodded slowly. 'You want to help?'

'If you'd like me to.'

'You're not going to punch me on the nose for being a complete tosser?'

This got a sceptically arched eyebrow. 'Have I ever punched you on the nose for being a complete tosser?'

'No, but I've never spent three consecutive hours imagining you naked before.' The second eyebrow joined the first. Sirius grinned. 'More like eight hours, if you count the village, and the walk back, and the cold shower…' Her mouth opened and then closed again. Ha! thought Sirius who's gobsmacked now?.

And then Ze said, 'So none of your new knickers were involved? Good – I'd rather go starkers than wear that lot, even if I am just in your head. Now, what time did you want to go running tomorrow?'

A/N - so here we are - but what will happen? and does she actually fancy him? (well, of course she does, but will she ever realise it?) and what's Clive off telling people? Did anyone survive the latest trip to hospital? And perhaps most importantly of all...when will McGonagall rise again (duh duh duhnnnn)?

Just a few things to think about while you're leaving your review (that would be a massive hint, of course, to use that little box just below...) Thanks to all who've read and reviewed past chapters - couldn't do it without you!


	22. A Little Birdie Told Me

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 22: A Little Birdie Told Me

They decided to jog at half seven. Sirius felt this was cruel and unusual, but Ze pointed out that no one would be awake to see him staggering home all blotchy-faced and winded. Sirius weighed the benefits of sleep versus those of not coming off a weak-arsed podger, and decided that Ze's was a very good point. The walk back to Gryffindor Tower from their detention was spent yawning and very carefully not discussing the reason for Sirius's willingness to crawl out of bed and slog through the mud. He was shuffling rather more than Ze thought was usual, but she nobly refrained from serving up any naughty banter or – better still – provocative gestures. For his part, Sirius was busy reciting the Warlock's Code in his head – all four hundred seventy-odd pages of it. It was very useful: he didn't pant over Ze once.

When they parted ways for the night Ze was whistling idly through her teeth, and Sirius was deeply immersed in Section A, sub-section . They exchanged a friendly wave and made their ways to their respective rooms to tuck themselves in for the night. For Ze, this meant tip-toeing through the maze of trunks and four-posters as silently as possible. For Sirius, it meant nearly suffering a coronary.

When he pushed open the door to the boys' seventh he had just got to a particularly comma-rich portion of the Code, and didn't realise that there was a full war-council in session until he walked into the back of Peter's chair. Considering the delicate state of the region just below his belt, this was something of an attention getter. It was definitely responsible for the first shout. Having his eyes focus on James's bandage-enswathed head was responsible for the second.

'Bloody fucking hell!' he yelped. 'All that just for looking?'

'Oh that's not from the troll,' Peter explained cheerfully, pushing his ceremonial hood back. 'That's from Madam Digweed.'

Sirius gaped at James. 'The matron thumped your head in?'

'Stupid cow,' James snarled, adjusting the strap of gauze wrapped tightly beneath his chin. 'She ought to know better than to chase innocent concussed invalids into the bedpan cupboard.'

'Ah-hem,' Remus said significantly. 'Could we please keep in mind that we are in the middle of a Tribunal?'

'Yeah,' Rob said. 'Put your hoods back up. Well, except you, Potter,' He amended as James vainly attempted to drag the hood over his legitimately (for once) swollen head.

'Get yours on,' Zeke mumbled from beside Peter, indicating with his head that Sirius's "ceremonial robes" (read: nicked from the laundry in second year) were waiting for him on his bed.

'Do I have to?' Sirius began plaintively. 'They're bloody stifling –'

'Oh, just sit down and let's get on with it,' Remus snapped.

'What's going on?' Sirius whispered as he slid into the vacant chair between Peter and Rob, both of whom had drawn their hoods back up.

'Allister,' Peter whispered back out of the corner of his mouth. 'He's gone and snogged some bird.'

'….did knowingly and purposefully break the bonds of brotherhood and the bet…' Remus was saying.

Not too shabby, Sirius thought, a bit much on the alliteration, but then it must have been done up last minute….

'Do you, Allister Marcus Wood, deny the charges?' Remus was asking.

There was a long, potent silence. The figure – Sirius could vaguely discern that it was Allister's stocky frame ensconced in the voluminous cowl – seated in the chair at the centre of the circle gave a faint sound like a gargling drain.

'Oh, someone kick him,' Remus said irritably, 'he's gone right off to sleep.'

Quite obligingly, seven feet swing out and made contact with relish. 'Sgngngphh!' Allister cried, his body jerking to attention as his hood caught on the back of the chair, nearly garroting him as he tried to sit fully up. There were a few faint sounds of hastily averted strangulation, followed by a sleepy, 'Whas' a' matter?'

'Did you snog her of your own accord?' Remus asked with a sigh.

Allister rubbed a bit of gunk from his eye and focussed blearily on the black mass of shadow where one assumed Remus's face was. 'Er…yes?'

'Try it again, with feeling!' Rob instructed hastily – after all, Allister was the most junior member of the Great and Secret Order of the Most Mysterious Brotherhood of the Seven Sons of Godric. It was only expected that he slip up now and again.

'Er, yes!' Allister repeated, with appropriate vim. And then, out of the side of his mouth, 'whas'he talking about?'

'That girl you snogged in Hogsmeade,' Zeke replied sotto voce.

'Oh, right, 'cos I was having this dream, see –'

'So you admit to knowingly and purposefully violating a bond you did enter into, in full understanding of the consequences, with the members of the Brethren –'

'I'm still not sure that's on,' Rob was saying, 'We didn't technically make the bet as the Brethren-'

'Yeah,' Zeke agreed. 'We weren't wearing the robes –'

'Or the High Holy Underpants of Office,' Peter said with a nod.

'And Clive's not a part of it –'

'So really, it wouldn't be right to try him by Tribunal, seeing as this doesn't fall under the Brotherhood's jurisdiction –'

'But according to Section Four, Clause Nine –'

'Could someone get this itch just behind my ear – I can't reach and it's bloody murder,' James was saying, leaning forward hopefully.

'Belt UP!' Remus roared. The room fell immediately silent. James even attempted to tug his finger out from beneath his bandages. For a long moment everyone shifted uneasily in their seats, waiting. And then Remus jerked his robes off and tossed the lot over his shoulder. 'Right, s'load of bollocks,' he said once his face – red and sweating after the heat of the cowl – appeared in the candle light. 'What do you say Allister – streaking the Great Hall or professing your undying love in song?'

'Thank Merlin,' Zeke moaned, stripping off his own robes and using them to wipe his face.

'Here, make sure you give those a wash,' Rob said plaintively. 'I don't want to get stuck with them next time now you've gone and used them as a towel.'

'Sod off,' Zeke replied companionably. 'And I think we ought to offer up the option of a nice little dance to accompany the song.'

'Ooooh,' James cried, 'perhaps a jig?'

'Will someone,' Sirius said loudly, 'tell me what the hell is going on?'

Allister, in the middle of struggling out of his robes, half turned in his chair. The point of his hood was hanging comically over the side of his face, which was large and red and perspiring, and only added to the effect when he, very seriously, said, 'I've fallen in love.'

There was a long moment of silence, and then everyone exploded. The guffaws ricocheted around the room, bouncing off the walls and ceiling and floor as the boys clutched their stomachs and howled. In the centre of the circle, Allister fought his way out of the robe and glared about rather angrily. 'It isn't funny!' he cried. 'You lot are just jealous!'

'Yeah,' Rob wheezed, 'that's it - jealous.'

'You should be,' Allister said, smug now, ''Cos I'm getting something you're not!'

This sobered everyone more quickly than a jet of icy water. Faces morphed from delight to discomfited strain in moments, and there was a prodigious amount of shifting in seats. 'He has got a point,' Zeke mumbled after a moment.

'Oh bollocks – he's lost!' Rob cried defiantly. 'He couldn't stick it out!'

'I rather think the point is that now he can,' Remus said drily. For a moment they bowed to their hormones and sniggered.

'So what's it going to be?' James asked. 'You running round in the nuddy or what?'

Allister paled noticeably, but squared his shoulders and assumed a defiant stance. 'If that's what it's to be.'

'Oh, come off it – that's really only fun when it's properly cold,' Sirius pointed out. 'No sense in letting him off light.'

'Yeah,' Zeke grinned. 'I liked the bit about the singing. In the Great Hall, where everyone can hear.'

'I'm not doing anything that'll embarrass Ellie,' Allister informed them with creditable firmness.

'What?' Peter gaped at him. 'You can't say that!' he cried, turning to the others. 'He can't say that!'

'True, mate,' Remus sighed to Allister. 'You're not in any position to be making demands.'

Allister's chin ratcheted out the way only a Scotsman's can. 'Not doing nothing,' he repeated obstinately.

'Er, all together, yeah?' James suggested, eyeing Allister. The rest of them shuffled into a loose circle, heads together, voices low, leaving Allister to stew over by Peter's bed.'Can he just refuse then?' Zeke asked. 'Like nothing'll happen?'

Everyone looked around uneasily. 'Well…' Sirius said. 'I mean, s'not like we're going to say "do it, or we'll have your liver out", is it?'

'But he agreed,' Rob said, much aggrieved. 'He agreed to do whatever we decided.'

'Yeah, but we didn't exactly put in a clause for what would happen if someone reneged on that bit, did we?' Remus pointed out. 'Flaw in the process – not your fault,' he added quickly, patting Sirius on the shoulder. 'Could've slipped anyone's mind.'

'But he's got to pay,' Rob sputtered. 'He signed his name. Made his mark. Gave his word. Pledged his troth-'

'I think you only have to do that if there's a baby on the way,' Peter interrupted dubiously.

'So the point is,' Sirius said, before someone mentioned semantics. 'So the point is, we just have to find something horribly embarrassing and deathly dangerous that he won't object to doing. Right?'

A long communal glance was exchanged. 'Right,' they chorused, and turned back to Allister, who was not looking appropriately cowed. Yet.

'Ohkaaaay,' James said, picking at his gauze. 'How about he has to nick something?'

'Like McGonagall's knickers!' Rob cried.

Sirius whimpered reflexively at that combination of words.

'Now that's just cruel – this is punishment, not a suicide mission!'

'Whinge whinge whinge,' Rob replied to Zeke. 'You're just jealous you didn't think of it first.'

Allister had paled another impossible shade, and seemed to be sweating again, despite the fact that he was down to his pyjama bottoms with the robe off. One got the distinct impression that he would soon be discovering the boundaries of his love for Ellie – and that he'd have reached them at the exact moment he was confronted with a pair of Minerva McGonagall's drawers.

'I don't think,' Sirius began hurriedly, 'that stealing knickers – from anyone - would be the best idea. We've just had loads of trouble for it, haven't we? Don't want people thinking we're funny somehow…'

'Good point, good point,' everyone agreed, with considerable muffled conversation and exactly enough harrumphing to indicate that serious business was being conducted. Words like "squid" and "treacle" were mentioned quite often, and, for some reason no one could ever pinpoint, "hoover" kept popping up. And then, as the candles guttered and the wind howled, there was one final, mighty harrumph! and they turned back to Allister, wearing maniacally gleeful smiles.

Allister swallowed visibly, but held his ground. 'Are you ready?' Zeke asked, his deep voice rich and sinister in the dimness. Allister nodded. And they told him. There were whimpers. There were groans. There was even one perfectly gasped "fuck me!" In the end, Allister was white-faced and waxen, his gaze horrified and fixed on a reality no one else could see.

'Well?' Rob asked.

For a moment Allister looked perilously close to tears. And then he slowly, shakily, nodded. 'Alright,' he whispered, and then, clearing his throat, 'alright, I'll do it.'

'Well that was easier than I thought,' Remus murmured.

'We didn't even get a chance to threaten him with the salamanders,' Rob complained.

Zeke just rolled his eyes and yawned mightily. 'You're a nutter.'

'So,' James said, adjusting his headwrap and giving Allister a leering grin. 'How'd it happen?'

'Eh?' Allister said, coming back from his own private thoughts – which were probably full of the hell he would be facing in the morning.

'How did it happen?' Rob repeated. 'You know – your fall from grace. Your great undoing. The snog that ruined it all – how'd it happen?'

'Oh, that,' Allister said, and a gooey smile stretched across his face. Sirius was certain that, in some more demonstrative universe, there would have been chirping birds and a golden glow and perhaps even an angelic chorus. It was that sort of moment, so soppy and sickening it could turn the stomach of the staunchest romantic.

'Oooh, sounds grand,' Peter chirped, and produced a bag of Bertie Bott's Everyflaovour Beans, which he set to consuming whilst sitting tailor-style on the end of his bed.

The rest were somewhat less enthralled. 'What's that he's humming?'

'Here, it sounds like a – what do you call it – three beats, dance, big whirly dresses and getting your toes stood on?'

'A waltz!'

'You have to wear a big whirly dress for that?'

'No you birk - she does.'

'Who's she?'

'The girl you're dancing with!'

'But he's not dancing with anyone-'

Remus leaned toward Sirius and said, 'five to one Zeke thumps him inna head.'

'That's not even worth the maths,' Sirius sneered in return. "Ouch!" shouted Rob, in response to Zeke's hand thumping him – just barely – on the ear. 'See?' Sirius said. 'You've got to be more specific Moony. Now!' he added in a decent shout, which stilled the fight, Peter's candy consumption, and Allister's humming. Only James continued what he was doing, which was shoving his toothbrush beneath his bandages to relieve an itch. 'Either tell the story, or go to bed.'

Allister looked unaccountably bashful. 'Oooh – he's blushing!' Rob crowed. 'It'll be good then.'

'Well belt up and let him tell it,' Zeke replied, settling back against a bedpost. Peter offered him the bag of Bertie Bott's, and he silently accepted.

All eyes were trained on Allister, who scuffed his foot and said, 'Well, its sort of silly, really….' After a chorus of "oh come on – tell!" he shrugged and settled in. 'Well, I'd asked her to Hogsmeade 'cos Greg Satterfield was making like he was going to ask her, and I've fancied her since last year, but –'

'Get to the good part!' Rob interjected, pelting a bean at Allister's head in protest.

'I am!' The younger boy returned. 'Anyway, we sort of wandered all over, and she kept standing really close like, and I kept sort of edging away, 'cos she smelled really nice, and she's very pretty and – '

'Did you see her tits?'

'NO!'

'Well hurry up – we haven't got all night,' Zeke yawned.

'Fine – we had had a walk and were just coming back and she was saying something about how Greg was so nice, always helping her with her Potions work and how he had been really browned off that I'd asked her first and I just – I kissed her!'

'Nice,' James said approvingly.

'So what happened then?' Remus asked with a grin.

'Nothing,' Allister said with a smile.

'Ehhhhh – look at that grin,' Rob laughed. 'Come on then – what'd you do next?'

Allister looked faintly confused. 'Er…nothing. Really. We walked back to the village and met up with her friends in the lane and they all giggled.'

This was met by six very blank stares. 'You mean,' Zeke said slowly, 'that you just snogged her the once?'

'Well…yes.'

'You didn't, I dunno, stop off for a bit behind a tree?' Remus suggested perplexedly.

'Or get your hand up her skirt?' Rob offered.

'No!'

'Not even while you were snogging her?' James queried.

'No!,' Allister cried, even more emphatically. 'It wasn't like that, okay? It was nice.'

The others were looking dazed. 'All that,' Remus muttered, 'for one snog.'

'He's going to –' Zeke began, gobsmacked.

'I know!' Rob moaned. 'Just for a bloody kiss. Tell me you snogged her rotten,' he begged. 'Tell me you didn't just – just - kiss her without a bit of tongue and then go skipping through the meadows.'

'We didn't skip,' Allister said mulishly.

'Well why the bloody hell not?' Remus asked, almost snarling. 'Seems you've wasted a brilliant opportunity – who knows, there might even have been tulips!'

'Er, traditionally you tiptoe through those,' Peter interjected a touch hesitantly. 'You frolic in meadows.'

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered precisely what the hell was wrong with all of them. They were acting like girls. 'Oi!' he shouted. 'Leave off him – if he wants to snog her sweetly or nicely or whatever it was, let him. I'm going to bed.'

This was greeted with curses and a shower of earwax flavoured sweets. But after an appropriate amount of ribbing, the rest began to yawn and stretch as well. 'I'm for bed,' Zeke said, clapping Allister on the back. 'Let us know when you finally figure out what your knob is for.'

'We'll leave you our forwarding addresses,' Rob added, 'Since the letter'll probably take a few years.'

'Fuck off,' Allister said with surprising dignity as the three younger boys disappeared down the stairs.

'You think he knows what he's getting into?' Remus asked through a heavy yawn.

Sirius grimaced: he'd gotten together with Grace in fifth year, about this time, too. She'd been so sleek and cool and knew so much more about what they were supposed to be doing. He tried to imaging Allister and his Ellie, and suddenly wanted to warn the boy that no amount of snogging – or anything else – was worth what was going to happen in the end. But he just shrugged. 'I think that's something you have to figure out for yourself, isn't it? He'll learn – she'll see to that,' he added darkly.

There was silence. And then James said, 'I think Moony meant, er, something else…'

But Sirius had already fallen down onto his bed, and was busy dreaming.

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius had had better mornings. He'd spent some of them actually sleeping, for a start. And, when he hadn't been able to spend them snoring peacefully in his bed, he at least hadn't been panting for breath in the gray chill of an October dawn. Then there was the fact that running was hardly better on the second go. This time Ze had "taken pity on him" and chosen a route around the lake. The positive was that it didn't have many hills; the negative was that it had everything else. So far Sirius had tripped over a tree root, skidded over a patch of shale on his arse, and been stung by nettles. Twice. He didn't know you could even get nettles around Scottish lochs – knowing Hogwarts, the groundskeeper had probably planted them for a joke.

Then there was the fact that Ze was positively blasé. As though this were a day like any other. When they'd met in the common room she'd been as normal as anything, like he hadn't humiliated himself in front of her during detention the night before. There hadn't been so much as a grin or a gleam in her eye – not even when she'd caught him staring at her legs. She'd just yawned and continued stretching. No jokes, no jibes, not even a knowing glance. It was driving him mad! He'd bloody well told her that she was the cause of massive quantities of sexual frustration, and she didn't even blink. Alright, so he'd tried to reassure her by explaining that he would do his best not to bother her with it, but really, did she honestly think she could trust him? For Merlin's sake, he'd gone and said that he might lose control and shove her up against a wall without warning. And that would only be the beginning of it.

Of course, she'd gone and worn those bloody running shorts again.

Maybe that was a sign – her way of saying "I know you can't help it…". Wouldn't that be right? Girls were devious like that, knowing exactly what you were going to think about their showing a bit of skin. Well, two could play that game, couldn't they? Alright, perhaps not the devious part. In fact, Sirius wasn't sure how you went about it at all. Or if it was even a game. Somehow he doubted Ze would collapse into a quivering puddle of hormones if he strutted around in a pair of running shorts. A quivering puddle of hysterical laughter, more like. He needed something else. Something suitably scintillating.

But when he tugged off his shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his face as they began their cooling down stretches, she barely glanced his way. It just wasn't right. He'd taken his shirt off – she was supposed to be looking. He knew, in that way of knowing that doesn't require conscious thought, that he was nicely put together. Oh, he'd never be the massive, uber-fit sort just bulging with muscles, but he wasn't too shabby. He was sleek, that sort of elegant figure that tapers perfectly from firm shoulders to narrow hips without ever appearing anything so gauche as skinny. And, unlike most of his peers, he was out of that age of adolescent gangliness – he'd already begun to fill fully out, and with a bit of work, he would be as solid and fit as a body could be. Ze should have been bowing before him. Or, in the very least, surreptitiously licking her lips.

Instead, she just put her head on one side and said, 'You've got nicely defined pectoral muscles. I'll have to tell James that all that horrid training has paid off.'

In a daze, Sirius nodded. Nicely defined pectoral muscles. Nicely defined pectoral muscles. Dripping with sweat, positively steaming in the cool morning air, every sinew taut and visible from the recent exercise, and he got "nicely defined pectoral muscles". Oh yes, and a mental note to compliment James. That really wasn't fair. She was bloody well driving him mad. Well, at the moment he wasn't salivating noticeably or trying to coax his pulmonary system to ignore his groin - but he was definitely aware of her. Didn't she feel something of the same? He was a perfectly acceptable specimen of manhood – couldn't she rouse just a bit of interest?

Sometimes he thought she did. He was fairly sure she'd spent an entire secret passageway leering at his bum that day they'd gone to the salon in Hogsmeade. Of course, that could have been a fluke. She'd known him for six years and some, so if she were going to suddenly find him electrically attractive, surely it would have happened before now? And what, his common sense asked, is the bloody point of all this? You're supposed to be ignoring girls – not getting into a fit over one. It's Ze. Just Ze. So she smells nice and gets your jokes and can bend those legs nearly behind her head – she's out of bounds. Out. Of. Bounds. To which Sirius replied: bugger it all.

And went to take another cold shower.

*.*.*.*

With a faint yawn Ze waved Sirius off, saying, 'just try not to get caught.'

Looking more than slightly affronted at this slur on his powers of subterfuge, he frowned and replied, 'I'm never caught!' as she disappeared up the girls' staircase.

He'd just finished explaining – in less than articulate dialogue – that he would be unavailable for breakfast. There was a Thing. Ze knew all about Things. They were a Marauder specialty, and anyone who'd shared quarters with them knew that whenever one of the upper year Gryffindor guys said "can't sorry, I've got this Thing", you got your head down immediately. "Thing" was an all-purpose code word for the sort of top-secret mischief they were always getting into – it was rumoured that there was actually a special alert system amongst the teachers that went arse over end at the first hint of one. Which would be completely understandable, given the Thing With Cardew's Expanding Vest, and the Thing With Filch's Kettle. Not to mention the Thing With Kettleburn's Key Ring. That would go down in infamy. They were really quite lucky the blood had scrubbed out, especially the bit in the Great Hall.

Since Ze knew that the Thing didn't have anything to do with her, she felt quite safe in retreating to her dormitory to wash. A Sirius-free morning wasn't too horrible of a prospect, either. After that bit with using his shirt as a face flannel, she definitely felt the need for a bit of personal space. And perhaps an icy cold shower, too. Then there was Clive – he'd wanted to talk with her, and she had a feeling that he'd be seeking her out before the morning was up. It would be nice, really, to have a moment with him that was Claudia-free. They could have a chat, and hopefully he could explain why his girlfriend seemed to have taken a dislike to his friends. It was the sort of topic he would have to bring up, though – novice though she was when it came to inter-relationship politics, Ze knew enough not to go saying "so, she seems a right cow – care to discuss?" It would have to be handled with care, precision, and quite a large dose of Clever Distraction. Probably best to do it in the presence of food, then.

And so, freshly washed and humming idly, Ze tripped down the steps and joined in the mumbling, bumbling crowd of newly-wakened Gryffindors struggling toward the portrait hole in hopes of reaching the Great Hall soon after. A glance at the clock by her bed had told her that she was likely to catch Clive at his usual post- lie in, breakfast-seeking hour, and as she reached the common room she used the final step as a height from which to search for his head. But all she saw were younger students - a group of fourth years doing a fair impression of zombies lurching through the crypt, smaller contingents of fifth and sixth years yawning hugely, and one lone third year girl standing nervously by the hearth. Probably waiting on her friends to come down and provide safety in the form of numbers, a theory Ze had never fully understood. But then, she'd never quite cottoned on about needing to go to the loo en masse either.

Just as she was about to wade through the sea of semi-somnolent bodies, she caught sight of a surprisingly tidy figure with freshly combed hair hurrying down the boys' stair. 'Oi! Clive!' His head half turned and then, with a jerk that could only be premeditated, snapped back the other way. Ze wrinkled her brow - had he caught sight of something else? She tried again. 'Clive, over here!' she wasn't shouting precisely, but even half-asleep, teenagers make quite a lot of noise, and there was a chance he couldn't hear her over the din. By this point, she'd fought her way to the crowd to intercept him halfway between the stairs and the portrait hole.

'Hi Zaz,' he said, turning before she'd quite reached him, like he'd known she was there even though he had been hurrying along as if he weren't aware of her.

'You're looking awake this morning,' she said, coming up short as he'd turned around so quickly, trying to catch his eye and failing. Perhaps he'd spotted someone over her shoulder?

'Er, yeah – late to, um, meet someone sort of…thing,' he trailed off, his eyes flicking wildly about and his face inexplicably flushing.

'Oh. Ah, yeah, 'course. I won't keep you,' she said, hastily stepping aside, an unfamiliar sort of nervousness blooming in her stomach. 'Right, well, whenever you'd fancy having that chat, you know where to find me, yeah?'

This caused the flush in his cheeks to intensify, and his eyes to widen with something that looked horribly like mortified fear. 'Yeah,' he said far too quickly. 'Yeah, yeah I'll do that. Gotta run –'

And with that, he quite literally did, executing a sort of skipping jog through the throngs of students and leaping through the portrait hole as though he were escaping something horrible. Ze watched him go with a decidedly perplexed expression. Had she just been brushed off? By Clive?

*.*.*.*

'Have you got it?'

'Yeah.'

'Right, boost him up then.'

There was a sound of mighty heaving, and Allister Wood's dust-encrusted face emerged from a hole on the flagstones of the fourth floor corridor in the east wing. Panting, he scrambled the rest of the way out, shoving a lumpy parcel wrapped in black cloth ahead of him. 'That,' he panted, 'was bloody horrible.'

'Good job us,' Remus grinned, passing the manky boy a handkerchief and a goblet of water. 'You got it – and the robes as well?'

'Yes,' Allister said, somewhat shirtily. Of course, given where he'd just been, one really couldn't blame him. 'It was horrible – there were dead things, floating in jars.'

'Well what did you expect, hearts and doilies?'

Allister glowered at Sirius as he wiped away the last of the dust. 'Let's get on with it, shall we?' James suggested, hoisting the bundle as he stood. 'Loads to do!'

And with that, the four of them crept furtively toward the Great Hall.

*.*.*.*

Ze knew something was odd as she stepped into the Great Hall. It was one of those annoying things, the sort that hover at the edge of the brain like an uninvited party guest without the manners to introduce itself properly. It niggled at her as she walked between the tables and badgered her as she sat down, but it wasn't until she'd loaded her plate with toast and an egg that realisation dawned. She was jus raising her goblet to her lips as Eleanor Gordon sat down across from her and tipped her head to the side as though to toss her hair. Except there was no hair to toss. Which was very odd, because Eleanor had a waist-length curtain of shining brown tresses that she reportedly brushed two hundred strokes each night.

Pumpkin juice went spattering all down Ze's front as she realised that Eleanor's hair wasn't tossing silkily over her shoulder because it was gone. Not all of it, just most of it. In fact, it looked as though she'd gone to Franny at CUT and asked for exactly the same style Ze had acquired the week before. And she wasn't the only one. Dazedly, Ze looked around, discovering that the inconsistency niggling at her since she'd come in was the fact that half the girls at Hogwarts seemed to have gotten their hair cut. And not just a trim. Everywhere she looked short, tufty hairstyles stared back at her. Slightly shaggy bobs with sideswept fringe and almost spiky close-cuts were side by side at every table in the room. Staring in shock, Ze mechanically brushed at the juice soaking her shirt.

Were they trying to look like her?

*.*.*.*

'Right then, just hoist those bits up – perfect – now the strings –'

'I think maybe its supposed to be more of an X? You know, crossing over the chest like?'

'Yeah – you're right – shift it a bit then – there!'

'Anyone coming?'

'No, all clear.'

'You all set Allister?'

There was a muffled groan and the sound of something wheezing at a piercing pitch.

'Ooh, just look at him - done his Mummy proud.'

There was another, more emphatically vicious, groan.

'We ready?'

'Yeah. We'll just walk out like, and you come in behind, okay?'

'Right – let's go.'

Remus, James and Sirius appeared around a corner with preternatural cool. Hands thrust into pockets, slouching in the amble of the recently-awoken, they approached the doors to the Great Hall in a state of Just Out of Bed-ness so perfectly honed it was almost unreal. No one looking at them could possibly have suspected they'd been up robbing secret chambers of invaluable treasures. After all, they hadn't even had breakfast yet.

Just as they reached the front doors James gave a huge yawn, giving his back molars a nice airing. He was just getting to the bit with the stretch at the end when he gave a faint yelp. 'What the-'

'Good morning gentleman!' a voice boomed, and all three jerked in surprise.

James had, in fact, bounced off of the imposing girth of none other than Professor Slughorn. 'P-p-professor!' James managed.

'Mr Potter,' Slughorn said pleasantly, smoothing his moustache. If he noticed the stutter, he gave no sign. 'I was wondering, Mr Black, if I might have a word?'

Sirius broke out in a cold sweat. Could he have found out? Already? 'Er, um, sure Professor,' he said slowly, trying to telegraph telepathically that the others were to act as normal as possible. 'I'll just meet you after breakfast?'

'Breakfast?' Slughorn boomed. 'Lunch, more like – but you youngsters, eh? Need your sleep. You more so than the rest, Mr Black,' he added with a lecherous wink. Sirius did his best not to gape in horror.

'Er…'

'No, we'll chat now,' Slughorn continued in the tones of someone so assured of his own importance that disagreement is not only unacceptable, it is unimaginable. 'You'll have him back in just a bit,' he promised Remus and James as one meaty hand closed over Sirius's shoulder. 'I daresay he'll even get a bite to eat if we hurry. This way, Mr Black.'

Sirius had no choice but to allow the professor to lead him away, but he turned back and gave a Significant Look that sent James and Remus hurrying to the Great Hall. 'Ah, sir –'

'Bet you're wondering what all this is about, eh?' Slughorn asked as Sirius bowled along in his wake. 'Well let me just tell you that I know exactly what you've been up to, my boy, and I've got more than a few words to say on the subject!'

*.*.*.*

Ze was jolted out of her reverie when Remus and James banged down on either side of her, looking just a bit too nonchalant for comfort. That sort of innocent disinterest could only mean one thing. 'No one's going to go mad and start throwing food, are they? Only I've just had a shower.'

'Oh no,' James said with a wicked grin. 'This'll be far worse than food.'

'Just stay put,' Remus added. 'The doors would not be the best place to be.'

Ze sighed and sat back, waiting for the entertainment to begin. She wasn't kept long. Almost immediately there was a short, hideous blast that sounded like a mountain goat in distress. It issued from just beyond the doors, and silenced the Hall as only a sound promising horrific things can. People sat up a bit straighter and craned around their neighbors to get a view.

There was another burst of the hideous sound, and then, as though that had been a warning shot, the full attack was launched. Prolonged and vaguely reminiscent of music, the sound continued as a figure marched into the Hall. The noise was explained by the bundle hung round its chest, a large bladder of air with pipes protruding. One could really only guess it was a bagpipes though, because the figure bearing it was wearing a kilt. And, of course, a full mask. As one, the Hall covered its ears with its hands, every face clearly saying "where's the joke then?"

Ze leant over to Remus and said, 'I didn't know he played the bagpipes.'

'He didn't,' Remus replied. 'Quick study, our Allister.'

'So what's the jo-' Ze fell silent though, as seven figures flowed into the hall. And they did flow – probably because they were long hooded robes floating in the air, arms folded across their chests in an imitation of corpses. There was a long moment of confused glance-exchanging as the bagpipes continued to play (a rather generous verb, considering Allister was about as musical as a backfiring lorry).

And then, from the Slytherin table, an enraged voice shouted, 'Here, those are our robes!'

Quite a lot of heads volleyed back and forth from the speaker – Roger Hammersmith, a seventh year prat – and the robes, which were now executing a clumsy Scotch jig.

'And that – that's the Staff of Salazar!'

'And the Summoning Leek!'

'GET HIM!'

The Hall burst into uncontrolled laughter as the entire Slytherin table – most of them looking slightly confused - surged up and pounded down the Hall toward Allister, who had abandoned his bagpipe and was sprinting for the doors. Quite a lot of the Slytherins went haring after him, but some of the cooler-headed stayed behind to collect their secret artefacts. They looked right idiots though, because the robes and banners and the weird serpentine staff and shrivelled brown bit – Ze could only assume that was the mysterious and sacrosanct Summoning Leek – had floated gently higher, and were dangling coyly above their heads. There was quite a lot of jumping and cursing, and several ineffective spells that drew more laughter from the watching crowd. It was sad but true that the only bonding agent amongst Hogwarts' houses was a universal dislike of the Slytherins.

Ze, laughing merrily as she watched Wythe vainly attempt to capture the hem of one of the robes, couldn't help but admire the prank. Everyone knew each house had a secret society. The rule was that, so long as no one talked about them, everyone could go on pretending that the secret was really, well, a secret. Each to his own, and all that rubbish. Occasionally some clever bastard would even manage to pinch one of the Holy Relics or whatever they called the stuff. No one had ever got the full regalia, though. And no one had ever put it on display for everyone to see.

'Won't they catch up to him eventually?' Ze asked, sobering as she thought of Allister in his kilt and mask.

'Yeah,' James said, wiping tears from his eyes. 'He'll take a few lumps, but it's only fair.'

'What about Siru-' But Ze didn't get to finish asking about Sirius, because a bony hand clamped ominously onto her shoulder, running off every other thought in her head.

'Miss Meridian,' Professor McGonagall said with frightening crispness. 'Might I have a word?'

*.*.*.*.*

'-and that's how he came to be called Monty,' Professor Slughorn concluded with a chortle. 'Now, let's get down to business.'

Sirius, who had been listening for pounding footsteps and murderous screams, jerked himself back to the present. He'd stalled for time by asking Slughorn about the stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling, knowing it was a story the professor couldn't resist telling. But now the reprieve was over, and he had a nasty inkling that things were about to get much, much worse. 'Of course,' he managed to say, chanting to himself, he can only catch you if you confess, he can only catch you if you confess.

But this mantra was absolutely no use, because the next words out of Slughorn's mouth were: 'It's quite reasonable to want to scratch your itch with the first available finger.'

Sirius was silent for a moment – he was completely unprepared for Slughorn in Analogy Mode. 'Er…I'm sorry?'

'I mean it's perfectly natural!' Slughorn cried. 'A growing boy's bound to be curious about these things, and one such as yourself – everything to offer – has more than a few opportunities to test the waters I'm sure.'

There was another flummoxed pause, finally broken when Sirius gave up the game and said, 'Sorry sir, haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. Really.'

'I'm talking about you rogering that that Meridian bird,' Slughorn boomed, and Sirius half expected the man to slap him on the back like an old chum. Because that was the sort Slughorn was – brocade waistcoats and sherry after supper, the sort who called everyone "old chum" and peppered his monologues with "don'tcherknow"'s and "I say"'s. The sort who belonged at the head of a hunting lodge banqueting table, a brandy snifter dangling from one meaty hand as he pontificated on his own superiority under the glassy gaze of an enormous stag's head. None of which had anything to do with the matter at hand.

'What?'

Slughorn leant back in his chair and placed both hands on his massive, brocaded paunch. 'No need to play coy with me, my boy,' he said jovially, rather like a jolly favourite uncle.

Except that none of Sirius's uncles were jolly, and if he had to pick a favourite among them he'd need a list of patients from the Mental Ward at St. Mungo's to choose from. 'I'm not –' he began, but Slughorn was in no mood to be stopped.

'I've had the whole story. Had a natter with Minerva – that'll be Professor McGonagall to you – last night, and she's told me the whole bit. Spotted you and young – what's her name? Sandra?'

'Zenobia,' Sirius replied coldly.

'Right, Zenobia – anyway, told me that she'd spotted the two of you in some sordid shop in the village. Intimately engaged, was how she put it, clearly knowledgeable about one another's, ah, hem, preferences, I believe she said.' For the first time he looked mildly discomfited, and Sirius thought, that's right, my surname's Black and I wear ladies' knickers – how do you like that? 'Well,' the professor was continuing, 'I mentioned that I'd be happy to sort you out, put you right, that sort of thing, and I don't mind telling you she was relieved. Probably would have taken you to task for so much as wanting a peek – that's Scottish morality for you. Any road, I've sorted her, and like I promised, I'm going to sort you!'

Sirius resisted the urge to slide down in his seat and groan. Had anyone else ever been subjected to this? Dragged into the poshly fitted up study and made to listen to this glorrofat walrus lecture about shagging, all the while desperately trying to disappear into the velvet-upholstered wing chair? Probably not. At least then there would be some justice in the world.

'-easy for a lad to be led astray, taking what he can get wherever he can get it easiest. Happens to us all, and in the early days, it's probably best! Goodness knows it beats buggering your best mate – not that Hogwarts has ever had a history of that, of course,' Slughorn added hastily. 'But I've heard tales about Muggle schools – well, another time. What I'm saying, my boy, is that you've got to be careful where you dip your quill, eh?'

'Dip my quill?' Sirius repeated, stifling the desperate desire to giggle madly.

'Dip your quill, service your broomstick, you know what I mean. Now, some people,' he winked obnoxiously to let Sirius know that he, Slughorn, wasn't one such, 'would tell you that it's just flat wrong. They'd spout drivel about abstinence making the heart grow fonder and all that rot, but we know different, don't we? We're men! We've needs that must be met, but that doesn't mean you should be foolish about. There's all sorts in this world, my boy, and the very worst you can imagine is a girl with marriage on the brain.'

'Marriage!?' Sirius choked, now well past the mad giggling state of humiliation, and fast approaching the territory of curling into the fetal position and waiting for it to all just go away.

'Oh, seems content with a bit of slap and tickle and no commitments, does she?' Slughorn asked knowingly. 'Well let me be the first to tell you that she's not nearly as innocent as all that. She's plotting, you mark my words – they all of them plot. She's looked at you and said to herself, "Well old girl, he's got a bit of money and he doesn't hurt to look at – get it while you can!". You just mind you're using a preventative every time – and I do mean every time. Can't let 'em get away with it, don'tcherknow.'

There it is, Sirius thought helplessly, the "don'tcherknow". Next it'll be the "I say".

'I say,' Slughorn began, as though he'd just thought of an idea – no doubt a capital one.

And then the "y'see"…

'….y'see, the trick is to get 'em all turned about –'

And finally the smug folding of the arms.

'- and there you've got it,' Slughorn said, smirking as he folding his podgy arms over his chest. 'All the shagging you want, and none of the hassle of having to talk to her. Just you mind old Sluggy's advice,' he concluded, tapping the side of his nose and winking again. 'I'll not lead you wrong. And I know of where I speak - I was a lot like you in my day, I don't mind saying. I've managed without ever having to marry one of them, or even cohabitate. It's all in how you play it. Just think my boy,' he added, spreading his hands, 'all this could be yours one day.'

Yeah – a stuffed crocodile and a jar of candied pineapple in a rank dungeon, talking with kids about sex, Sirius sneered. 'I think you've misunderstood,' he said, as levelly as he could.

'Oh, fancy her, do you? Never fear lad, it'll pass. Before long you won't even remember her name. I remember when I was about your age –' he began, but he was interrupted by a sound of something tumbling down the dungeon stairs, quickly followed by a yelp of pain. 'What the devil –'

Sirius, never so thankful in his life to be hearing the sounds of a mob setting on its target, leapt from his chair. 'Better go and check, hadn't you sir? I'll just be going then – loads to do – breakfast to eat – girls to shag –' and with that, he was out the door.

*.*.*.*

'And let that be a lesson to you!' McGonagall said sharply, and shut the door.

Ze stared down the corridor. Had that really just happened? Really? Had Minerva McGonagall just given her advice on how to earn a man's respect without – how had she put it? – falling off her broomstick? And that bit about watering the garden – she was fairly sure there'd been an analogy there, but she'd gotten lost about the time McGonagall had started explaining the difference between the rain and the watering can. What'd she have said if she knew about hosepipes? Ze thought with a desperate giggle. Talk about a euphemism!

'Ze!'

Snorting again at the very idea of McGonagall using a watering hose as a symbol for – what had she called it? - his privvies, Ze let out a great "HA!"

'Oi, Ze!'

And then, of course, there was all that bit about the flowers opening under the rain – Merlin only knew what that was supposed to symbolise…

'Bloody hell, have you done deaf?' Clive panted, spinning her around by the arm. 'I've been chasing you since the Transfiguration corridor.'

'Oh,' Ze said, snorting again. 'Sorry.'

'Are you, er, alright? Only you keep giggling…' Clive said, a touch nervously.

Ze pressed her lips together and sobered. 'Yeah, yeah, um, hehehe, fine.'

'Really, 'cos that was another –'

'I'm fine, really. Perfectly alright,' Ze said, managing to squelch another laugh. 'Did you want something?' Cor, did I just say that, she thought, amazed at herself.

'Er…' Clive was suddenly looking unsure, but then he bucked himself up, and a look of almost painful something came over his face. 'We need to talk,' he said earnestly.

'Oh. Alright then.'

He looked faintly surprised, as though he were searching her face for signs of fear. 'Right,' he said. 'Um, maybe over there?' he suggested, pointing to a window alcove.

Ze nodded, and walked over to it without comment. This is so odd, she found herself thinking, but then again, the entire world seemed surreal at the moment, so perhaps having to agree to talk with Clive was really quite normal. 'What's up?' she asked once they were both seated.

Clive cleared his throat and, in surprisingly condescending tones, began. 'Well, I know that my getting together with Claudia's made things a bit difficult, what with me suddenly spending so much time with her. I can see that it's affected our friendship, and I'm sorry for it, because that wasn't what I meant to happen.'

Oh, Ze thought, so you have noticed.

'I just wanted to say that I'm sorry things have been complicated for you, and I do know what you're feeling.'

Complicated for me? she thought blankly. What I'm feeling?

'I hadn't quite realised exactly how things, er, were between us, and to be perfectly honest it had never even crossed my mind that it would turn out this way. I've always thought of you as the person I'm closest to, and that nothing would change that – No, that's not right, look, I'm trying to say –'

This isn't right, Ze's intuition was saying warily. He's being too poncy –

'What I mean, Zazzer, is that while I'm flattered that you fancy me, I just can't feel the same about you.'

Ze blinked. 'WHAT?!


	23. Flower Power

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 23: Flower Power

Ze and Sirius collided in front of the Gryffindor common room.

'I'm sorry – '

'Didn't see you –'

'- need to get by –'

'- trying to find someone-'

'You!' they chorused, recognising one another simultaneously and immediately ceasing the scrabble for first entry through the portrait hole. 'Have I got something to tell you!'

There was quite a long silence.

'Well?' Ze finally prompted.

'What, you're not going first?' Sirius asked.

'Er, not really the sort of thing…in a public corridor… You go on.'

Sirius glanced around as the Fat Lady tried to project an air of absolute deafness whilst peering at them with the sort of curiosity that guarantees widespread gossip. 'Um, not really the time,' he said.

'Right,' they chorused again, and then to the Fat Lady: 'Malodorum Totalus!'

'Oh alright,' she sniffed, swinging open, 'it's not as though I would have repeated anything.'

But they were already scrambling through, emerging into the common room, which, given the general dreariness of the weather, was full of people. There wasn't so much as a vacant bit of rug in a private spot, and with a snarl Sirius grabbed Ze's hand and pulled her through the crowd. 'Come on,' he said, leading her in the direction of the boys' stair.

Together they pounded up the stairs, ignoring the curious looks of a few passersby, which quickly morphed into suggestive grins and salaciously quirked brows. Neither Ze nor Sirius noticed: far more important things were filling their minds. Sirius threw open the door to the seventh's with a bang and stared around. 'Damn,' he swore when he saw that the room was empty.

'Probably they're still trying to find Allister,' Ze said helpfully.

'Bollocks – they're out there having all the fun!' Sirius fumed, pushing the door shut and dropping onto his bed. 'I can't believe I've missed it!'

Ze's lips pursed. 'Missed it? Weren't you out there somewhere making things dance around?'

'No, that was Pete and Rob and Zeke –' he paused, his cheeks flushing. 'I was, er, um, detained.'

'Detained,' Ze repeated.

'Yes,' he said, brushing an invisible bit of fluff off of his shoulder.

'This detainment,' Ze said, her brain making sneaky suggestions, 'did it have anything to do with, oh, I dunno, a telling off for being seen in the Hogsmeade pants shop yesterday?'

Sirius's mouth gaped open. 'How did you know?'

''Cos I've had one too. From McGonagall.'

He winched. 'Ye gods. I had it from Slughorn.'

'Yeech. Bet he didn't tell you it wasn't proper though,' she added bitterly.

'Weeeell…' Sirius considered how best to describe the encounter. 'Mostly he just kept winking like it was some huge joke.'

'S'not fair,' Ze fumed. 'I'm a girl, so I get the "if you were proper, you wouldn't even think of it" lecture, and you get the "haha – just don't get caught" bit. I bet he didn't even mention gardens and watering cans.'

Sirius didn't need a mirror to know he looked positively flummoxed. 'Sorry – gardens?'

'And she just kept going on about how, sure, the watering can could get the flowers wet now and again, but it wasn't nearly as nourishing as the rain, and it only came around if it felt like it, and it wasn't natural. People have been using irrigation for thousands of years, for fuck's sake – hasn't she ever heard of a drought? Bloody consistent, natural, perfect rain my arse!'

Sirius scratched behind his ear, having the distinct impression that he ought to contribute something. 'Er, Slughorn warned me about dipping my quill.'

'Ha!' Ze snorted. 'At least he didn't compare you to a barnyard animal. McGonagall told me that no boy would buy the cow if he could get the milk for free! The cow!'

'And why would he be buying milk, anyway?' Sirius asked.

Ze shot him a death glare, prepared to tell him off royally for being so thick. Just as she was forming words she spotted the small smile curling at the edge of his mouth, and felt her own lips begin to curve. Soon there was a snort of laughter escaping, and she couldn't help but grin. 'Sorry,' she said, shaking her head. 'I don't know what's got into me – I was fine right after, honestly. And then, well –' she bit her lip, shook her head again, and pasted on a smile. 'What was it you wanted to tell me?'

Sirius was watching her narrowly. 'Oh, I just wanted to warn you about the lecture, in case Slughorn was set after you next. I didn't quite put together that if he'd got me, maybe McGonagall was getting you. If it makes you feel better, he gave me a stern warning about "preventatives".'

This coaxed a small, genuine small. 'McGonagall told me to keep my knees together,' Ze admitted, and then returned to chewing her lip.

'There was something else, then?' Sirius prodded gently.

'I don't –' Ze paused miserably, and then blurted, 'It's Clive.'

'Clive?' Sirius repeated, his brows arching upward. Whatever he'd expected, it hadn't been this. 'What's he done?' he asked, patting the duvet beside him, inviting her to sit.

With a sigh, she sank onto the bed and immediately tucked her knees up to her chin, chewing on her thumb. 'He thinks I fancy him,' she said without warning.

'He what?'

'Yeah, that's what I said,' she replied wryly, glad that Sirius, too, found this a completely unbelievable idea. 'Or, at least, that's what I was thinking. I don't know that I ever properly said it, and if I did, he definitely didn't hear me.'

'But – I – but – what happened?' Sirius asked, still gobsmacked. The idea of Ze and Clive, romantically, was about as realistic as Sirius dating a – a – a hippogriff.

Ze was shrugging. 'Honestly? I have no idea. Remember yesterday, when we met up with him and Claudia in the village?' Sirius nodded, thinking back on the rather awkward encounter. 'Well, he said he'd like to have a chat, and this morning was the earliest I could manage, but when I went looking for him he actually ran – I am not joking - ran in the opposite direction after I'd got his attention.'

'But if he wanted to see you…'

'That's what I thought!' she cried, running her hands through her hair. 'But then I got distracted by Eleanor's hair, and your prank, and then McGonagall came and…well, it sort of went out of my head, didn't it? But there I came out of McGonagall's office, and here was Clive, wanting to talk. Not the best time for it, but I was so out of it I probably would have sat down for a chat with the Grim Reaper and never blinked. And Clive was nattering about how he knew it was difficult, what with him and Claudia together all the time, and he completely understood how I felt, and I kept nodding and suddenly he's said how he's flattered I fancy him, but he just doesn't feel the same.' She looked helplessly at Sirius. 'What the bloody hell?'

Sirius shook his head slowly, judging it best to let her finish her rant.

'He went on about how he'd never noticed, and he'd always thought of me as a friend, and he just couldn't imagine it any other way. And then he started saying how I'd cut my hair and started wearing better clothes, and there was this expression on his face like "oh, you poor silly kid, thinking that" and I just wanted to hit him! I mean, this is Clive. He's my best mate in the world aside from Jacko, and he thinks I fancy him? And that I've cut my hair and changed my clothes just so he'll chat me up instead of Claudia? Because that was what he was saying – that I was jealous of her. That I hadn't needed to "get his attention" until he'd started going out with someone else! Which is bollocks! Agggh!' And with that, she viciously mauled a pillow.

'So,' Sirius said, once the feathers had settled. 'He tells you he isn't interested, and asks can you please just go on being friends?'

'Oh,' Ze said. 'Ooohhhh,' she laughed, and there was an hysterical edge to it. 'Oh no no no no no. That would have been something like the Clive I know. No, this was a completely alien being. You know what he said? He told me that he'd rather we not spend any time together until I'd got my feelings under control. Under control, like I'm going to tackle him in the common room and shag him rotten in front of an audience! Like I'm so bloody smitten I can't help myself!'

A sudden horrible thought had struck Sirius: what if Ze was this passionate because she did feel something for Clive? What if she'd simply never acknowledged it before – had, in fact, hidden it so cleverly that even she herself hadn't noticed?

And then she said: 'If I didn't know that the real Clive wasn't a smug bastard who'd put his quidditch play in jeopardy, I'd be worried.'

Well, if she can bring it back to quidditch, chance is she's not harbouring a secret passion, he thought with more relief than he'd been prepared to feel. 'You mean he doesn't want to play chaser anymore?'

Ze gave him another of those "were you hiding behind the door when they handed out the brains?" looks. 'Of course he does – or, I assume he does. He didn't really mention anything about it. But, as training's the only time we see one another anymore, I think he means for me to stuff it. That was the implication anyway, that I should be keeping away from him, not the other way around.'

'You're not going to quit,' Sirius said flatly.

'Of course I'm not going to quit,' she snapped. 'If his relationship with Claudia is so bloody important, he's the one can get shot of sport and go spend all his time with her.

''We need to have a chat,' Sirius murmured.

'Ah, technically, we are,' Ze pointed out.

'No, not me and you – me and Clive. Or, rather, the rest of the side and Clive.'

'Oh no you don't,' Ze said furiously. 'You are not going to corner him and make it out that I came running to you lot to make him play nice with me.'

'This is about bigger things that you and Clive, Zaz,' Sirius replied impatiently. 'If he's acting like a complete git he'll ruin our chances of winning a match – and we're due to play Ravenclaw in a fortnight. We can't be dealing with this, not now!'

'Well what are you going to say, "Sorry you're dumb enough to think Ze'd fancy you, but could you please pull your broom out of your ass so we could get on with winning"? That'd definitely have him working with everyone cheerfully.' Sirius scrubbed his hands over his face, wondering why everything insisted on going to hell all at once. Sensing his frustration, Ze collapsed backward onto the mattress, staring up at the canopy with a frown. 'I'm sorry,' she said on a sigh. 'I keep yelling in your ear about things that aren't your problem.'

Sirius dropped his hands away and looked down at her, sprawled on his bed with her legs dangling over the side, chewing on her lower lip and glowering at the bed curtains. If we could get her smiling, this would be perfect… the naughty bit of him said. And, before his more sensible parts could take control, his mouth had formed the words, 'Well, I suppose I do owe you a friendly ear after all the enthusiastic shagging everyone knows we've been doing.'

But, instead of giving him one of those smouldering glances girls who recline seductively on beds know perfectly well how to give, Ze let out a decidedly porcine snort. 'Not everyone,' she chuckled. 'I've just been informed – very emphatically, I might add – that when you say you want to get in our knickers you really mean get in our knickers.'

'What?!' Sirius gaped. 'Who the hell –' he began, but broke off suddenly when realisation dawned.

'Clive,' Ze confirmed ruefully. 'Spent about five minutes pontificating on how gutted he'd been when he found out, as he'd been under the impression that I fancied you, not him. He made it sound as though we were confidants, me helping you gradually reveal your preference for ladies' wear, and you helping me entrap the object of my secret and forbidden lust. If I hadn't been so bloody shocked, I'd have laughed my head off. He actually tried to convince me he'd seen you getting into some sort of fancy underwe –' she broke off, having noticed the brilliant blush that was rushing over Sirius's face and up into his hair. 'No,' she said flatly. 'No, that is just not –'

'It's not what you think!' Sirius cried.

Ze opened her mouth. And closed it again. There was a long, loud silence, the sort that's filled with lots of darting eyes and arching brows and furiously working mental muscles. Finally, she found her tongue. 'So, ah, well, so you're, um, saying that – that – '

'It was a one off, okay?' he broke in, unable to bear her stumbling through the rest of that sentence. 'We'd just got back from the village, and I had that whole sack full of stuff, and it all sort of tumbled out on the bed, and there was this thing I couldn't figure out so I held it up and it still didn't make any sense, so I sort of tried to fit it on, you know, in relation to the proper parts –' he gulped here, and Ze licked her lips, wondering if she ought to tell him that, technically, he didn't have the "proper parts". Much to her relief he rushed on, saying, ' – which, of course, I haven't got, so it just mucked things up further and I promise I was only trying to see how it fit on, I promise and I had somehow gotten it wrapped around me and it was red with ribbons on and just that second Clive came bursting in and I promise it didn't look like what it really was. I promise,' he repeated, while Ze tried to sort through his monologue, which marched right past the charge of "aggravated assault on the common comma" and slammed its nightstick against the dark and dingy door of that most criminal of grammatical atrocities: the rape and pillage of comprehensible syntax.

'So you're saying,' she began when she'd worked it out, 'that you weren't so much trying it on for looks as discovering how it fit?'

Sirius examined this from all sides, wary of cleverly concealed entrapments, and finally felt confident in saying, 'Er, sort of.'

Ze nodded slowly, processing this. 'Right, so did you?'

'What?' Sirius asked, wondering if this was one of those sneaky "ask him again while he's got his guard down" moments.

'Did you figure out how it fit?' she expounded patiently. ''Cos frankly, I know you're not a poof. And I've seen the proof that it's girls that do it for you, and while I've no doubt you're kinky somehow, I just don't see having your own lingerie collection as being the bend.'

Sirius was torn between elation and humiliation, but ultimately the voice crowing "Ha! She's thought about how we like sex!" won out. He was, after all, seventeen. 'Er, thanks?'

She just shrugged. 'Any time. Now let's see it.'

For a long, demented moment he thought she meant she wanted him to repeat the trying on of the suspenders, a mental gymnastic routine that left him wondering about Ze's particular bend. And then he worked out that she just wanted to know the underwear itself looked like. So, with a faint resurgence of the blush, he shuffled off the bed and retrieved the parcel of lingerie from behind the stone. Unable to quite meet her eye, he upended the black bag over the bed, cascading tissue and naughty bits of silk and lace onto the covers. 'Er…' his cheeks heating again to glow as brightly as a sunset, he raked his fingers through the tangle of fabric, finally discovering the offending suspenders and shaking his hand to free them of several pairs of clinging drawers. Mutely, he spread the garment, if one could call it that, out on the bed.

Both he and Ze stepped back, arms crossed. The pregnant quiet of tense and fervent thought reigned for several long, contemplative moments. There was a faint murmur of conversation from the common room, and the rain tapped gently against the glass at the window. Finally Ze said, 'Search me if I know how it goes,' and prodded the red lace with a curious finger.

'It's the dangly bits, isn't it?' Sirius asked, thrilled to have his confusion vindicated. 'They've got no point!'

Ze's brow furrowed. 'Maybe they hold the stockings up?'

'Ooooooooh,' Sirius said, gazing with dawning understanding at the small scrap of material.

'I still don't –' the chiming of the Gryffindor clock interrupted her, and she smacked her forehead. 'Fuck!'

'What?' he asked, stepping forward in concern.

'I'm supposed to be meeting Dorcas. Don't ask,' she added as she saw his lips form up the question. 'I don't think I'm allowed to tell you, and anyway, I wouldn't know where to start.'

But instead of attempting to wheedle the answer out of her, he just said, 'Take it with you?' in a desperately pleading tone of voice.

'What – you mean –' she stopped hesitantly, glancing back at the bed.

'Please?' he begged, dropping to his knees and clasping his hands. 'I can't – it's right by my bed, and I can't think, and I can't sleep, and if anyone finds it –'

Ze, who was unused to anyone, especially someone as attractive as Sirius, kneeling at her feet, nodded so rapidly her teeth rattled. 'Right, okay, of course – I'll take it!' she shouted, over his continuing pleas.

'Oh thank you!' he cried, throwing his arms around her waist and hugging her tightly, his face squelched against her stomach. 'Thank you!'

For a long moment Ze stood frozen, her overloaded nervous system shouting He'skissingyourstomachhe'skissingyourstomach- over and over again, until the more staid, sensible voice of logic interrupted with, there's a slight chance his mouth is in incidental contact with your jumper somewhere in the external vicinity of your small intestine which, no matter how you take it, is not a very romantic thought. The upside of it was she managed to say, 'Your nose is digging into my navel,' whilst giving the back of his head an awkward pat.

He pulled back to stare up at her soulfully through his hair, his hands still resting large and warm along her sides. 'I adore you.'

'Oh,' Ze said, her insides melting. 'That's…nice.'

*.*.*.*.*

'I've got a plan.'

Ze settled herself into the chair and fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. Hearing the words "I've got a plan" come out of Dorcas's mouth was slightly less unnerving than hearing Peter say "I think I've eaten something funny". You never knew where it was going to lead, but you could be dead sure it was going to be bad.

'A really, really good one,' Dorcas relished, positively cackling.

Having nipped up to her dormitory to dispose of the Circe's bag, Ze was a few minutes later for their rendezvous and felt that she ought to at least listen – not that she had any other choice, considering Dorcas had claimed the most secluded corner of the common room for their use. When Ze had finally managed to locate her, it hadn't been because Dorcas was standing up waving. That would have been too easy. Instead, Ze had clumsily sidestepped two third years wrestling over a Rememberall, tripped over a rug, fallen through the gap in two tapestries and landed with a heavy "oomph" on the richly carpeted floor of a semi-secret nook. Dorcas had glanced down at her rather regally, and gestured for Ze to take the empty chair. Now, having brushed herself off and scrambled off the floor, she was ready to face her fate. 'Okay,' she prompted. 'Let's have it.'

Dorcas leant forward so that her nose was inches from Ze's face. 'I've going to give him a taste of his own poison.'

Ze did some rapid memory dredging, but failed to recollect Rob ever poisoning Dorcas. 'Er…just what sort of poison are we talking about?' she asked, feeling her way along delicately. 'Nothing too deadly, I hope. Ha. Ha. Haha,' she added, hoping to spur Dorcas into assuring her that this was all a joke.

But all Dorcas did was sniff dismissively. 'I was speaking metaphorically,' she explained, her tone adding the "you twit" as clearly as if the words had been spoken. 'Ergo, I am going to do to him what he's done to me.'

'Snog him for a joke?' Ze asked weakly, wondering how delicately she could put the fact that Dorcas kissing Rob would only get a laugh as a joke on Dorcas.

'Oh no,' Dorcas said, her eyes narrowing and her gaze focussing on a middle distance where she was undoubtedly applying the thumbscrews with one hand and pushing the branding poker into the fire with the other. 'No,' she repeated sibilantly, 'I'm going to make him understand everything he's put me through - I'm going to have him wriggling like a worm on a hook!'

Probably bad, Ze thought reflectively, that "hook" got all the emphasis there…

'He'll be begging me to give him a bit of attention - begging me, but I'll just let him stew until he can't bear to hear my name…'

'Right,' Ze said slowly. 'So you're going to poison him with…' she trailed off, bracing herself for something horrible.

Dorcas just looked at her blankly. 'Oh I'm not going to poison him – at least not traditionally,' she said, a small, wicked smile curling just the tips of her lips. 'I'm going to make him fall in love. With me.'

Ze stared at her for a long, long moment. 'I think you'd better start back at the beginning again.'

For the next hour, Dorcas outlined her plot. She explained tangential side-effects and contingency plans, she referenced spells and produced diagrams. She even thumped out an ancient, manky book with the words Moste Potente Potions carved into the front in frankly terrifying script, saying that the potion required was carefully detailed inside. 'I got it off Miss Pince,' she said proudly. 'You know, the librarian's assistant? She believed me when I said I needed it for Slughorn's class – gullible bat…' It was the sort of pride that stems from a job well done, and an unexpected victory won on territory well known for its difficulty. The potion she went on to describe explained why the librarian would have wanted the book under lock and key: it was a love tonic so insidiously, sinisterly powerful that no one had ever been known to resist it. Administered over weeks or even months, it would gradually and realistically cause the consumer to believe him or herself to be passionately in love. The genius of it was, Dorcas explained with glowing eyes, that thanks to the gradual development of symptoms (notably sighing, daydreaming, and incurable mooncalf stares) not even those closest to the victim would suspect that the onslaught of amour was anything but real. What amazed Ze most though was not the degree of preparation, but the zeal and animation with which Dorcas spoke. Never before in all their time living together had Ze seen her so fervent, so involved – not even when she was searching for the Mysterious Knicker Stealing Dog.

For the first time, perhaps ever, Dorcas had taken to something that she could share with other people. Ze just wished she hadn't been picked as a confidant. Because, however beneficial hobbies may be, deciding to destroy a relatively normal and harmless boy just isn't something you want to be party to. And so, as Dorcas wound down her lecture on the breakdown of after-effects (which was graphed and colour-coded), Ze scratched the back of her neck and tried to think of excuses. But, once Dorcas had tucked the graphs away, Ze was forced to stare into her pop-eyed face and admit defeat.

'Well?' Dorcas prodded.

Ze nodded. 'Right,' she began. 'There's no question it's a brilliant plan. But.'

'But,' Dorcas repeated, nonplussed.

'But,' Ze continued resolutely, 'I don't think it's the one you want to use here.'

For a moment Ze had the horrible feeling that Dorcas was going to burst into tears. And then, miraculously, her jaw thrust out pugnaciously and she crossed her arms over her chest. 'Yes?' she asked frostily. 'And why not?'

Think Zaz, think! 'Because…' Ze stalled. 'Because…well…it's cheating!' she cried triumphantly. 'Yeah!'

'Cheating?' Dorcas said indignantly. 'It is not cheating – have you got any idea how many hours I've spent planning this?' she gestured to the heap of presentation materials at her side. 'A bloody week – '

'I'm sure!' Ze interrupted hastily. 'And it definitely shows. It's just that, well, look at it this way, right? Rob isn't that clever. I mean, he isn't stupid, but he's hardly the sort to put much effort into a thing. He'd never have the – the gumption to spend a week planning out a way to really stuff someone up, would he? That doesn't mean you shouldn't spend time planning,' she added quickly, realising that this could be key to her strategy, 'it's just that if you really want to get your revenge, give him a taste of his own poison and what not, you should serve it to him in a way that no one could ever question. Do you see what I mean?' Ze knew Dorcas didn't. After all Ze couldn't see what she meant, and they were her bloody words!

But Dorcas was nodding slowly. 'I think so…A sort of honour amongst thieves notion?'

'Yeah,' Ze said desperately. 'Exactly that. Honour amongst thieves.' I just said the word "amongst" – what is wrong with me!?

'So why shouldn't I use the potion again?'

Ze scrambled for thoughts. 'Because- because – because look. That love potion literally changes the way you think, yeah? It doesn't teach you a lesson, it rewrites your entire book so that what you used to think of as strictly factual history suddenly becomes a fairy story. You won't make Rob fancy you, you'll just make his brain make him fancy you, and that's not right. Anyone with that book,' she pointed to Moste Potente Potions, 'and a decent talent with a manticore spleen can make Rob's brain think it's in love. It would be almost as easy as making him think he's hungry – and all you've got to do for that is wait around five minutes between meals. What you have to do,' she continued, 'is think like Rob – the real Rob. Which means sinking as low as you can get, and then rolling around in the mental equivalent of pig shit for good measure. Conniving and perfidious have got to be your watchwords. You've got to think cheat - because that's the only way you'll be playing fair.'

'And playing fair's important?' Dorcas asked dubiously.

'Yes!'

'But you said earlier that I couldn't use the potion because it would be cheating, but now I'm supposed to think "cheat"? Doesn't that mean I should use the potion?'

'No!'

'But –'

'Look, Dorcas, I know it doesn't make any sort of sense, but what I'm trying to say is that using that potion is wrong. Yes it would work, and yes you'd get your revenge – but changing what someone thinks, taking away someone's free will…that's not okay. And if you do it…well, I won't let you. Right?'

'Right,' Dorcas said. And then, after a long, tense pause: 'Do you know why I like you?'

Ze was so thrown all she could do was blink.

Dorcas was sat back in her chair, watching Ze with considerably more poise than usual. 'It's because you don't try to pretend.'

Somewhere deep in the regions of her stomach Ze felt humiliation begin to burn. 'Dorcas, that – '

'Oh, I don't mean that you're nice and you never make fun or think "durr, that Dorcas, what a weirdie". You'd have to be either a saint or daft, or both, not to think that. But you're honest about it. Even if you think what I'm doing or saying is stupid, you don't ever try to pretend I'm not saying it.' This last was said with such intensity Ze felt her muscles spasm with the snap of each syllable. 'You're the only person in this entire school that would have sat here and listened to me talk about poisoning Rob with a love potion. And you're definitely the only person who'd believe I'd actually do it.'

Anyone who'd make charts like that means what she says, the wry corner of Ze's brain murmured. She stomped on it and managed to say, 'well, your plans were certainly well-researched…'

'Of course they were,' Dorcas smiled, and there was something about it, something self-possessed, that lent her a sort of chilly elegance. 'I make good plans. But I don't understand people. That's why I need your help. So, what should I do instead?'

Ze was just opening her mouth to admit that she didn't know when there was a faint rustle of tapestry against stone, and Lily Evans burst into the alcove. There wasn't much space as it was, and what with Ze, Dorcas, two chairs and the charts, Lily was lucky to windmill for a few seconds and then fetch up hard against the wall. 'Er,' she said, wobbling a bit. 'Sorry to interrupt?'

'Oh,' Ze said, 'yeah, we were just – '

'Is that Moste Potente Potions?' Lily interrupted, her voice positively reverential.

Of course she would spot it. 'Yeah, Dorcas was just helping with my – um – my essay.'

Lily scraped her covetous gaze from the book to look at Ze in confusion. 'Essay? We haven't got an essay for Potions due –'

'Oh, no – ah – it's for detention. You know,' she gave a sheepish grin, and shrugged.

Lily frowned. 'Detention? An essay?'

'Oh. Yeah – very important to detention, essays.'

'Mm. And here was me thinking it was all scrubbing toilets. Right, well, I was just hiding from Potter-'

'He's back?' Ze asked.

Lily rolled her eyes. 'Of course – couldn't leave permanently, could he? That would be far too nice. If you go out there just don't tell him where I am, yeah? I've got loads to do…'

Dorcas had whipped out her wand and levitated her presentation into a tidy bundle. 'Make those revisions and I'll read them through later,' she said in frosty tones, ignoring Lily and giving Ze a frighteningly adept wink. 'We can discuss it again tomorrow,' she added, and then she and the papers managed to sidle shiftily out of the alcove.

'Weird,' Ze breathed.

Lily had already sunk into the vacated chair and was pulling massive quantities of parchment out of her bag, which seemed far too small to contain so many unbound books. 'Sorry to run you off – feel free to stay if you don't mind sharing.'

Ze almost smiled at this frank claiming of the space. 'I'd better go revise my essay,' she murmured, making for the exit.

'Oh yes,' Lily said, her words laced with amusement. 'I imagine so. Thanks, by the way.'

Surprised, Ze turned. 'For what?'

'For whatever is it you're doing for Dorcas. She needs it.'

'Ooooh, let's not be hasty,' Ze muttered, thinking of the charts. And then, because Lily's quill was already scratching away, she sidled out herself, wondering if omniscience was catching, and hoping desperately that it was.

*.*.*.*.*

' – so then we had to run them off, and that's how Zeke got the twitch, but really, once we were out of the dungeon we were safe as houses,' Rob finished cheerfully. He and the rest of the recently-returned delinquents were sprawled round the boys' seventh, licking their wounds while Sirius heard about all the mayhem he'd missed. 'Really good times,' Rob added for emphasis.

Zeke twitched, glaring balefully at his mate. 'Speak for yourself, you wanker,' he grumbled, and twitched again. Sirius could see his point: it wasn't a small twitch, not just an eye or a hand. It was all of him, and contrary to paltry things like reality and the laws of nature, he seemed to be twitching in and out of existence.

'Oh, it'll go away soon enough,' Rob beamed. Allister dabbed at his swelling eye and shot Rob a look of distilled death.

'Well at least no one saw your faces,' Sirius said bracingly.

Allister brightened slightly. 'But we saw their faces – bloody hell, were they narked!'

'Yeah, well, we got them where it hurt, didn't we?' James said, fluffing his hair. 'Their secrets aren't so secret anymore, eh?'

'I think we might've had every guy in Slytherin chasing us,' Peter said, trying to sound as though this were something that didn't inspire bed-wetting terror.

'Thank Merlin the girls didn't join in,' Remus yawned. 'That Venetia Draper-Perkins could blow down a house – we wouldn't have stood a chance.'

'That's something I've always wondered about,' Allister said a moment later. 'How come there are never girls involved?'

'Involved in what?'

'Well, you know – secret societies.'

Remus frowned, but it was Zeke who answered. 'Not involved?' he asked with a short bark of laughter. 'Girls are a secret society, mate. The ultimate one. Think on it – they're always wearing funny clothes, and talking in code, and making like the littlest things are so important. I mean, you think the Dressing Of The Idol is serious,' he snorted derisively, 'believe me, you don't even want to see a bird picking out shoes. And if you think Remus can tie you up with ritual protocol, then don't bother trying to work out why they have to hug and do that wonky air kiss thing when you know they'd rather be scrapping claws-out. Lost cause mate, lost cause. Men invented secret societies so we'd have a chance to compete. Training ground, if you will. Bloody load of good its done us, too.'

'So you don't think there's any girls in the Slytherin –what're they called again?' Allister asked.

'Serpentine Sons of Salazaar,' James and Sirius chorused.

'Here now, that's not fair - we're the Sons, they can't be too!' Rob cried indignantly.

'Well you just go tell them that, Rob,' Remus murmured. 'I'd do it from a distance though – not sure what that leek was for, but it definitely looked like it would hurt.'

'But really, whas' th' point?' Peter asked dreamily, staring out the window. 'I mean, you wear a big funny robe, and no one can understand you through the hood, and no one can remember the password, and no one knows why you do the handshake, and the Most Sacred Seal of Office gets remade every year out of Chocolate Frog wrappers. I'm just saying…why?'

There was a long moment of very audible Rain Dripping Down Window as everyone tried to think of a suitable reply. Finally, with much lowering of brows, James essayed: 'Er…because everyone else has done, for as long as anyone remembers?'

'Yeah!' Rob seconded. 'And anyway, the Most Sacred Seal of Office has got to be chocolate wrappers now – it's tradition!'

'I'm hungry,' Allister said, and that more or less killed the topic.

While Allister fielded offerings of strange and partially toxic foodstuffs, Rob gave a great yawn, tossed himself across Sirius's bunk, and said, 'So, where were you when it all went off?'

Everyone froze. Remus and James, currently locked into a battle of Who-Can-Discover-Where-He-Left-The-Past-Sell-By-Sw eets-First, stopped mid-scrabble, a bit of choreography that resulted in a bag of winegums exploding just in front of Allister's face. While the debris evaporated Sirius vainly tried to think of a plausible excuse. What wanted to come out was: See, I went with Ze to look at knickers and McGonagall popped by for a new pair of kinky boots and now I'm a transvestite with a preference for red lace and a tendency to shag on the first date – oh, and Slughorn fancies himself a swinger, just so you know. But by the time everyone had got their view clear again, all he could come up with was: "Eugrgh…crocodile?'

'Crocodile,' Remus repeated, enunciating carefully.

'Ahhhh…..yeah,' Sirius said.

'Crocodile,' James asked, licking his lips for the taste of it.

'Mmmm hmmm….'

'Crocodile,' Peter whispered, glancing furtively at the loo as though one might be coming up through the pipes as they spoke.

'That's right.'

'Crocod-'

'Okay, the next one who says it is getting a bloody great thump!'

There was a pause where everyone tried not even to think of reptiles.

'Lots of teeth,' Allister said contemplatively.

'Yeah,' Rob agreed. 'Funny though, the moustache tends to cover them. You'd think he wouldn't bother, what with the candied fruit and all. So, anyone for cards?'

*.*.*.*.*

It is a universal truth that food brings people together. Even if they're not eating it. People that don't eat tend to gather with other non-eaters, and they inevitably discuss the topic of not, well, eating. This phenomenon is only slightly less interesting than The Great Conundrum of Why The Toilet Tissue Is Always Low At The Very Start Of The Night. Anyone who has been to a club or an outdoor wedding knows this – go for a pee at the very first and you will be forced to use primitive measures; go at the end and there's a dunny roll in every cubicle. This is a sign that the Universe likes a drink as well as you do. It is also bloody annoying.

But then, so are people who refuse to eat.

'I haven't had broccoli in weeks.'

'Me either.'

'Or spinach.'

'Or sprouts.'

'And definitely not bread.'

'Or meat.'

'Or sugar.'

'I ate pudding once. I think I was five.'

This was followed by a long pause whilst everyone in the circle looked suitably horrified.

'Well,' the speaker, now aware of her sin, cowered, 'it was my gran's birthday.'

'Padfoot,' James whispered.

'Yes?' a horrified Sirius whispered back.

'Can we move?'

'Sorry,' James said a few minutes later when they'd relocated down the table. 'They always put me off my rhythm.'

'I know what you mean,' Remus sighed.

'It's the staring at one leaf of lettuce that does it,' Peter agreed. 'And if there's carrots – bloody hell.'

'Can't chew,' Rob said, swallowing.

'Not that you do anyway,' Zeke sighed.

'Where's Ze?' Sirius asked, looking around the table and not spotting her amidst the Gryffindor supper crowd.

'There she – no, sorry, just a girl with that sort of hair – '

'I see her – wait – unless she's gone blond – '

'There! Oh, oops…that's a boy…'

'Is it me,' Remus asked, staring round, 'or are quite a lot of girls missing their hair?'

'Oh I don't know that they're missing it,' Sirius said as he watched a Hufflepuff sixth year brush her newly-shorn fringe off her forehead. Somehow, on her, the gesture wasn't as attractive as he usually found it. In fact, he was fairly sure that the girl – once show-stoppingly gorgeous – had recently suffered a tragic and disfiguring accident. After all, she didn't look a thing like his Ze.

'But none of them's Zaz,' Rob said perplexedly. 'How're we supposed to spot her now, eh?'

'Well you've known her for years,' Sirius said, unable to keep the tartness out of his voice. 'Perhaps you could look beyond the haircut?'

'There she is,' Peter smiled, pointing with his fork.

'How can you tell?' James asked, craning round. 'I can't see a bloody thing.'

'All the girls are glaring,' Peter said with a shrug. 'They've been doing that for days. I think its one of those Popularity things.'

At that moment the crowd parted round Ze and she emerged in one of those slow motion catwalk glides that film stars and very debonair criminals seem to be born doing. Just when the musical crescendo-cum-hair toss was due she slid onto the bench between Sirius and Remus. 'Bloody hell, but they've got vicious. Sophie Morrow's broken up with Stephen Putney, by the way. Might want to avoid him, he's got something strange with pigeons,' she gestured around the face to indicate a generally avian disfiguration. And with that, she piled a heap of roast onto her plate and began to eat.

Everyone else returned to his private thoughts, which for Sirius meant counting the number of peas on his plate. This was a brilliant distraction, as one can only count to twenty when it comes to peas. After that, the urge to take a bite just for the sake of lightening the task becomes undeniable. And, of course, there was the added benefit that he did not see, smell, hear, touch or in any way notice the figure by his side. His world had narrowed to peas and, every time he approached the number nineteen, the muscular contraction necessary to firmly grasp his fork.

'Have you seen - that cow.'

Siirus was only on fourteen. There was a pea wobbling precariously just beside his poised and ready knife. Victory was certain, demise eminent…and yet, the number fifteen didn't' seem all that important. 'Mooooo?'

'That absolute bitch.'

Sirius looked up to find Ze, her eyes narrowed down to glowing slits, her pretty mouth locked in a snarl as she stared across the hall to the Ravenclaw table. In Sirius's private opinion, "cow" more or less described everything with tits on that side of the hall. "Nice" wasn't a Ravenclaw virtue. Neither was "sociable". The average Ravenclaw girl was what you'd get if you crossbred a wolverine and an iceberg. Perhaps with Dorcas as a great-aunt, just for genetic variation. 'Okay, narrowing it down to –'

'Claudia,' Ze hissed, a small cloud of steam rising off her plate to wreath her head in an admirably dramatic fashion.

But Sirius didn't take much time to admire the effect. Instead, his own eyes were clapping onto the mass of blond curls – and noticing that a head with Clive's slightly-too-large ears was visible just next to it. 'Right, well,' he began, but broke off when Claudia, as though sensing their gazes, turned slightly and looked across the room at them. Or, more specifically, at Ze. Instead of sniffing and turning away though, she shot Ze a smile that could only be described as demonically smug. And then Sirius began to understand.

'That lying, cheating, low-down-dealing slag,' Ze was fuming. By the point Claudia had shifted back around and was fawning over Clive, but there was a certain theatricality to her gestures that told Sirius she knew Ze was still watching. Knew and was glad.

'You don't think…' he trailed off.

Ze whirled to face him, the intensity in her expression sending him rocking back in his seat. 'Oh yes, I bloody well do! It's her! She's the one that's put it into his head that I fancy him, the great stupid bitch. Clive would never be stupid enough to think it on his own – she's used her wiles on him!'

'Wiles?'

'Sex!' Ze hissed, drawing closer to hold the conversation in a whisper as furious as it was muted. 'She's shagging him rotten and she knows he'll believe anything she tells him! That's the beauty of it, isn't it? She builds up his ego and convinces him that no girl could spend time with him and not fall arse over ears in love – case and point, poor little secret admirer Ze. But of course, if I try to point out that he's being led round by his knob, then I'm the jealous, paranoid one! Fuck, you really do have to admire her,' she finished in vicious tones, turning her head to watch Claudia whisper something in Clive's ear. She shook her head, a bitter smile playing round her lips. 'There's evil, and then there's girls.'

'Er, isn't that sort of insulting yourself?

The smile was turned on him, losing some of its bitterness and gaining all sorts of mystery. 'Whoever said being evil wasn't a perfectly respectable occupation? It sure as hell beats scrubbing loos.'

*.*.*.*.*

It was Tuesday morning, and Ze had a plan. It involved surviving the day without going off her trolley and maiming someone. Admittedly, there had been better plans. She fervently hoped that there would be be better plans, too, because she needed to rescue Clive from the clutches of Claudia and simultaneously make sure Dorcas wasn't poisoning the water supply. There was a distinctly icky feeling in her stomach that said planning might not help. A flamethrower might not help.

The worst of it was that it hurt. Not the flamethrower – she was only joking about that - but the bit with Clive. It wasn't a heart-wrenching sort of pain, more of a low-level gut-clenching ache that shuddered its way between fury and betrayal. All of Monday she'd watched him stroll through his day, only to flush a brilliant tomato and go stiff as a board the moment he spotted her. Then, of course, he'd turned and fled the opposite way. Rejection, Ze had discovered, could cut as deeply as a knife. Watching Claudia fawn over her best mate, kissing his cheek and pouring all sorts of poison in his ear, made her shake with rage. How dare that lying cow talk to him? And how dare he listen? Who had he known since first term? Who had been his best friend and constant companion, who had kept his secrets, who had spent ages on the pitch helping him get quidditch plays right? It wasn't fucking Claudia, that was for sure.

So why did he suddenly believe her? Because she is fucking Claudia, Ze's common sense said snidely. Or, rather, because he's fucking Claudia. Let this be a lesson to you pet: a man's loyalty only goes knob-deep.

A large part of Ze snickered. The crueller bit mumbled that in Clive's case, "knob-deep" could be measured with a toothpick. And the last bit said "you know that isn't true". Ironically, it was this last little voice that had Ze sighing with relief. Because she did know it was true. The male of the species had many faults – the tendency to ignore personal hygiene, a certain denseness in matters not pertaining to their next meal, and (perhaps most especially) a disturbing appreciation for a well-executed fart. But really, a day's end, they weren't so very different or deplorable. Snarky comments about their fickle loyalties smacked of Serena in a temper and Grace at any given time. Things like that only got said by girls who didn't want to understand a boy so much as control him. Really, guys trusted you as far as you gave them reason to. Sure, some of them were right little bastards, but that was true of girls, too. Just look at Claudia.

It was girls like her who gave rise to the myth that there could be no cross-gender friendships. Girls like her kept blokes quaking in fear of being chewed up and spat out without so much as a "sorry". And girls like her destroyed perfectly harmless friendships between nice, cheerful boys like Clive and sensible, easy-going girls like Ze. Probably Claudia was just jealous – jealous of the attention Clive showed Ze, jealous of the pride in his voice when he talked about her quidditch play, jealous of his obvious enjoyment of her company. Ze could understand that. She knew how he felt, because she felt that same way…which made it impossible to give up on Clive. It was completely platonic affection, and while she could admit that he was being an idiot just at the moment, she couldn't turn her back on him. Sooner or later Claudia was going to rip his heart out, and then he'd have no one. Well, except her and the rest of the guys, and the whole lot of them were useless when it came to comfort. But they could take him for a pint or five and joke him out of it. Eventually.

But while they were waiting for that to happen, what was she supposed to do? Her being upset had nothing to do with a lack of other friends – it was more the sick-edged worry of knowing that someone you love's done something irreparably stupid. If and when the rest of the side found out that Clive was being an idiot, they would take Ze's part in it. They'd probably even thump him until he came to his senses. Ze didn't like either of those outcomes. They had her stomach churning at just the thought of being in the centre of a massive fight – and, of course, if the side did split she would be blamed, because she was the girl. Everyone knew girls caused dissent. So what was she supposed to do about it? Challenge Claudia to a duel? Lock her in a cupboard and leave her to starve?

Wait a tick – that's not a bad id-

No Ze told herself firmly. We are not masterminding anything nefarious. We'll leave that to Dorcas. Pause. Oh piss, DORCAS! This was serious headache country. Dorcas was going to do something horrible. And, because she'd chosen Ze to confide in, it would be Ze's fault. What made it worse was that Dorcas – for some incomprehensible reason – thought Ze was a decent person. Because of that serious misjudegement on Dorcas's part, the idea of just telling someone responsible that there was a right nutter living in the Gryffindor girls' seventh felt like betrayal – and not just because the "someone responsible" would probably assume Ze was talking about herself. She couldn't rat Dorcas out, not after the girl had admitted to knowing that she was an object of both ridicule and mass pity - which was, somehow, worse. If Ze had been good at organisation instead of quidditch, she could well have been in exactly the same position. Not, perhaps, the most noble of inspirations, but the knowledge of how alike she and Dorcas were – and how lucky she was that she could sit a broomstick – effectively persuaded her that there would be no writing off of Dorcas's plans. There was no doubting it though – the past weekend had been among the most horrible in her life. Aside from Clive and Dorcas there had been a whole host of disasters. Detention. Knickers. McGonagall talking about sex…

But Sirius adored her.

At the very thought, Ze experienced that delicious internal melting all over again. Never mind that the whole idea of your insides going gooey was pretty much a daily occurrence, what with viscous membranes. This was seriously incredible stuff. It was also seriously unfair. There ought to be a law against it – something like "Sirius Black shall not unwittingly enchant young ladies, no matter how grateful he may be for their help". It would have to ban him from smiling, talking, grinning, making eye contact, and breathing to be effective though. And really, Ze wasn't sure what she would do without Sirius. It was just that he'd have to stop kneeling at her feet, his hands wrapping halfway round her waist, looking up at her out of the most beautiful eyes in the world and telling her that he adored her. That was absolutely going to stop. Immediately.

He'd said he adored her. Every time she thought about it, the world got a little brighter…

By Tuesday, however, she was beginning to wonder if she hadn't dreamed the whole episode. Sirius had joined her for her run each morning, but conversation had been sparse at best. At first Ze thought he might be angry with her for some reason, and then she took a good look at the rest of their friends. One glance down the breakfast table told her everything: they were back to Unmitigated Lust, deep in the tremors and mumbles and shudderings of the deeply afflicted. James spilt four goblets of juice, and Remus surreptitiously tried to draw on his fork as though it were a pre-execution fag. She hadn't even known Remus smoked. Peter spent the morning mumbling incoherently to himself, and they were all giving Allister – sitting happily with his Ellie, holding hands and chatting – looks of deepest loathing. Ze found that she just didn't want to deal with it. Being miserable was their own bloody fault, and if they felt it necessary to prolong the experience then they weren't getting nowt in the way of sympathy from her.

By the time Herbology arrived, she was concentrating on not reaching over and shaking them until their teeth rattled. One glance at the work tables, however, and she knew she wouldn't have the luxury of being distracted. 'That's right,' the professor said brightly, 'Somnolus Perpetus – more commonly known as the Our Lily of Eternal Sleep. This lot are still just sprouts, but there's repotting to be done! So get out your gloves and brandish your trowels – and mind you don't get bitten. Nasty thing, sleeping forever…'

Excellent, Ze thought blackly. Perfect, really – I'll let one bite me and I won't have to deal with anything ever aga-

'Forgotten our date already?' Colin Cross said in her ear.

She jumped, slightly disconcerted by the feel of his breath on her throat and wondering if he meant it to be as intimate as if felt. But when she turned round to see his grin, easy and friendly as always, she relaxed, knowing that any hint of flirtation was just in her head. 'Sorry,' she grinned back, 'I'm useless.'

'I dunno about that,' he laughed, picking up her bag and pulling her toward the table opposite her usual spot with the other Gryffindors. Blue eyes flicked up to hers and he grinned crookedly, adding, 'You're crap at repotting, but you do improve the scenery.'

Oh.

Steering her by the elbow, he planted her directly next to his own working space and passed her a pair of dragon hide gloves. For her part, Ze was still trying to tilt the world back onto its proper axis. The problem, of course, was that she couldn't quite be sure whether Colin was flirting with her or not. No one had ever flirted with her before, except for perhaps those Hufflepuff girls and Serena, and in both cases there had been quite a bit more fluttering of eyelashes. Colin seemed to prefer cheeky comments and suggestive grins. He can't be interested, her common sense said. You haven't given him reason to be!

'…you alright?'

'Hm?' Ze asked, his voice having interrupted her inner monologue. 'Oh, yeah, fine. I just, ah, haven't been sleeping well lately. Bit knackered, to tell the truth.'

For a moment she thought his face darkened, but then he smiled again and said, 'The trick is to find something worth losing sleep over.' If there was anything suggestive in this, she didn't have time to discover it because he immediately followed it with: 'By the way, did you ever sort Potter and Lupin out?'

Ze tried very desperately not to look confused. It didn't work, leaving her to ask, 'Er, sorry, I'm not sure I follow you…'

'On the weekend, when you and Black went running out of the pub – you were going after Potter and Lupin, weren't you?'

'Ooh, yeah, we were. Ahmmm…yeah, it got sorted.' She wasn't quite sure she should tell him about the troll, and anyway, she thought there was more to the story than what Sirius had told her. Scrapping because they'd accidentally knocked over its butterbeer her arse….

'Glad to hear it,' he said, in tones that didn't sound terribly concerned. 'At first I thought maybe you and Black were fleeing from me,' he added with another smile.

'Course not,' Ze laughed, feeling back on firmer ground. She could do this – this was just talk. 'We'd have had you join us if we hadn't been leaving.'

'Well, you might have,' Colin murmured, 'but I'm not so sure Black would've welcomed my presence. Don't think he fancies me.'

'No,' Ze agreed, deadpan, 'he does tend to prefer girls. But I can put in a good word, if you like.'

Colin looked gobsmacked, and then grinned. 'Think I could change his mind on the subject, do you?'

'Who knows, you might tempt him past reason.' Wait – am I flirting?

'I'd say you've got more experience in that area than I do. You're not, you know, dating him, are you?' he added, before Ze could properly assimilate this latest potential-compliment.

'Sirius? N- no,' Ze managed to say, wondering why that should come out as confused rather than amused. She wasn't dating Sirius. Not even close. 'No, 'course not,' she managed more breezily. 'We're just quidditch mates.'

'Mmm,' was Colin's only reply as he deftly removed a writhing flower from its tiny pot and transferred it to a larger one.

Unsure of where this was going, and feeling as though there were a rule book for this sort of thing that no one had ever bothered to provide her, Ze bent her head to the task of conjuring soil into larger pots for her share of the blooms. Risking a glance up she saw Colin's hair, rich and brown and curling, dip forward as he closed in on his plant. Over his shoulder, at the table opposite, Sirius was trying to sort out his own pots whilst keeping James from getting bitten by his flowers, which seemed to be enraged. As Ze watched, James prodded at them with his knife, nearly taking off several petals. The flowers swayed back and forth in a sinister cobra-esque way, and Sirius caught James's hand again before it could be snapped off. The sight made her smile, and for a moment she wanted Sirius to look up so they could share the joke.

But then Colin tapped his knife on the edge of a pot and Ze pulled herself back to their table just in time to meet his eyes. 'I was just thinking,' he said calmly, wiping the sap from the blade. 'If you're not busy this weekend, maybe you'd like to go down to the village?'

Ze's brain, still on autopilot, began reply for her. 'Yeah, sure, I need to pop into the quidditch shop – '

'Really?' Colin beamed. 'That's grand!'

And then Ze's brain caught up with her mouth, and she thought, oh, it's a date then. 'Y-yeah,' she stammered, feeling both phenomenally disappointed and incredibly flattered in the same breath. 'Yeah, grand.'

'Sorry,' Colin said, still smiling broadly, 'You must think I'm a complete birk, but I honestly didn't think you'd say yes until at least Thursday. I would've asked you last week, but, well, you're a bit out of my league.'

Ze was so surprised she didn't even feel the lily bite her.

*.*.*.*.*

'- Always mind where you're putting your hands! That's very good advice in a number of areas my dear, and you would do well to heed it. Now you're lucky they're still just babies and all you got was a mild nap – six months further along and we'd be sealing you into a glass coffin to keep you fresh. They're not called Eternal Sleep for laughs, you know!'

'Yes ma'am,' Ze mumbled, stepping backward and away from the irate Herbology witch. 'I'll be much more careful in future.'

'See that you are,' the professor sniffed. 'And don't forget that essay for the end of the week. Now scarper!'

Ze didn't hesitate. She was out the door at a dead run, and would have kept going on if Sirius's arm hadn't shot out and caught her round the waist. 'Are you okay?' he was asking, whirling her around and patting her face and then grabbing her hand to stare at the bandages. 'You're alright? You're sure –'

'Fine! I'm fine!' she cried, pushing the heel of her hand against her hammering heart. 'Doing quite well until you scared the bloody life out of me,' she added, but leaned into him a bit on instinct.

Sirius tightened his arm around her in a reflexive hug and then stepped back to survey her from top to tip. 'You were lucky Cross knew what he was doing – if he'd been a bit slower with that knife you'd be kipping in hospital for the next week.'

'Yeah,' Ze said with a faint smile, 'yeah, definitely lucky. I saw you fending them off James – well done.'

Sirius rolled his eyes. 'Mental, that one – don't know what we're going to do with him…' And, content that she was safe, he toiled up the hill beside her, keeping up a steady stream of inane chatter, never noticing that she seemed to be listening to only half of what he said.

*.*.*.*.*

'Zaz – oh, well, never mind then,' Remus sighed, leaning back in his seat as Ze stood from the table and meandered her way toward the door. 'She's been a weird all day.'

Sirius shrugged and swallowed. 'That Eternal Sleep stuff is pretty potent – wouldn't surprise me if she just needs a bit of a nap.' Remus eyed Sirius for a long moment, searching for tell-tale signs of resentment, anger, or – most importantly – jealousy. Sirius, noticing this shrewd perusal, paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. 'What?'

'That flower bite,' Remus began casually. 'Must have been pretty bad if she's still feeling it, eh?'

'Well, yeah, if Cross hadn't been right there to get it off her, she might've been out for days. They're no joke, you know – pretty clever of him to have spotted it so quick,' Sirius said with a shrug, taking his bite and chewing.

Ahh…so that's how the game is played, Remus thought, giving Ze points for unexpected cunning. 'Funny, him standing so close – like they were partnered or something,' Remus murmured, taking care not to meet Sirius's eyes.

'Well, they're mates,' Sirius said, and now there was a decided undercurrent of tension in his words. 'To be honest I think he fancies her a bit, but she's got no idea – not that she'd be interested if she did,' he finished, chasing another bite around his plate.

'She didn't tell you?' Remus asked, and then cursed himself for such hamfisted inelegance.

'Tell me what? That she's realised he fancies her? I hardly think –'

'No, tell you that Cross asked her to the village at the weekend.'

At this, the fork clattered back to the plate. 'What?'

Remus pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered if there weren't an easier way to do this. 'Look, maybe I'm –'

'Who told you that?' Sirius asked, completely forgetting his food as he leant forward to interrogate his friend. 'Where'd you hear it? It must be a li-'

'I heard him telling his mates as they were leaving the lesson,' Remus said as gently as he could. 'He'd been waiting for her to come out, but the teacher chased him off. His friends were outside the greenhouse – I guess they knew he was planning on asking, because they started taking the mickey out of him straight off.'

'He must have been joking,' Sirius said dazedly. 'He can't have – '

'He asked her just before the lily got her,' Remus explained, feeling that if Sirius was going to have the truth, he was going to have all of it. 'They were laughing at him, saying that after she'd realised that she'd agreed, she just wanted to drop dead.'

'B – but…she didn't tell me,' Sirius said blankly. 'She didn't mention anything.'

'Not anything?' Remus asked, feeling that this was a little too far out of character for Ze. And, as he was fairly sure Ze fancied Sirius as much as Sirius fancied Ze, he couldn't imagine her going round with another bloke behind his back. 'Not even a sort of hint?'

'She kept opening her mouth and then shutting it,' Sirius said, sitting up straighter. 'But whenever she'd start to say something, someone would come round and she'd belt up again. Do you think –' he broke off, shaking his head. 'I just can't believe it! I can't!'

'Why should you be so surprised?' Remus asked, marginally more comfortable now that Sirius wasn't looking so much like a lost puppy. 'She's really quite attractive, and she's definitely easy to talk to –'

'Oh, they ought to be queuing up to ask her out,' Sirius snarled, knocking over his pumpkin juice. 'She's bloody fantastic – I just can't work out why she's wasting her time on Cross! He's a complete tosser, and it's not like he cares about her. He practically let that flower chew her arm off before he did anything about it, didn't he?'

Remus smiled faintly. 'Really? I thought he was supposed to have been pretty clever for getting it off her so quick – but maybe I heard wrong. After all, I was on the other side of the table from the whole event.'

Sirius grunted incoherently. 'I can't believe she's letting him take her out – he's a complete tosspot. And he'll probably try to snog her in the woods, he's just that sort. No originality.'

'Of course, Zaz's not exactly experienced in these things,' said Remus the Sly Old Matchmaker. 'She could probably do with a warning –'

'Could she ever,' Sirius snapped, pushing up from the bench. 'I'm going to go find her and tell her a thing or two before she goes and gets herself in trouble.'

'Oh, I'd be careful about how I worded it, if I were you. If you sound too angry she'll probably think you're jealous,' Remus explained innocently.

'I am not jealous! I'm - I'm only trying to – to help her out. Yeah! I just don't want to see her get hurt. So I'm going to tell her he's a wanker. So she'll know. Right.' And with that, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the Hall.

Zeke, who had been listening since the first, let out a sigh and caught Remus's eye. 'Think he's realised he fancies her yet?'

Remus grinned. 'No, but the next week or two ought to be very interesting.'

A/N - can anything else possibly happen? well, obviously, it can...but you've got to admit, this chapter was more or less non-stop confusion. i have no idea what's going on and i wrote it. and, of course, life can only get murkier as Dorcas has a plan and Claudia has a Clive and Ze has a date. Oh, and Sirius might take all his clothes off in the near future, who knows? ** cheeky grin **

thanks to all who've been keeping up with the story - over 50,000 views and 2,000 reviews :) can't complain about that, can i? i wouldn't complain if you were to leave another...


	24. The Quivering Member

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 24: The Quivering Member

Sirius had got as far as the Charms corridor before his common sense caught him up. One moment he was stalking along, eyes narrowed, arms swinging, and the next he was stopped as dead and still as if he'd collided with a wall. 'I am so daft…' he mumbled to himself.

'Always best to know thyself,' said the pallid, be-ruffed gentleman in the portrait hanging just beside him. 'Saves other people a lot of bother, really.'

Sirius turned his head, eyes unseeing, and nodded at this unexpected pearl of wisdom. Not, of course, that he had any idea what it meant. 'Thanks,' he said, and resumed his journey, but at a much slower pace.

His first instinct was to go charging after Ze, grab her by the shoulders, tell her that under no circumstances would she go to the village – or anywhere else – with Colin Cross, and shake her until she understood. Thankfully, some small part of him wanted to survive the night, and it was staging a mighty rebellion. You can't go round telling her what to do, the voice was saying, and something in the tone suggested that if it had a body, it would be standing with its hands on its hips, tapping its foot impatiently and probably rolling its eyes. That never works, because then she'll just go and do it to spite you. And she'll know you're jealous.

'I am not jealous,' Sirius said indignantly.

'That's right, give 'em what for,' a suit of armour growled, rattling its halberd in its steel glove.

I am not jealous, he repeated silently, dodging around the Bloody Baron at the last minute to avoid that oh-so-disturbing feeling of walking through someone who isn't there, but has managed to make you believe he is. I just…I care about what happens to her, he said lamely, knowing he sounded an utter tit. She's my friend.

Bollocks, the voice snapped, sounding faintly annoyed. But that's not my problem, see. That's the Conscience's job, and once he's back from having a drink with the Id I'll set him straight on it. For now, let's just try to get through this alive, shall we?

I am, Sirius thought dimly, talking with myself, about myself. I'm telling me that I'm not thinking what me's thinking. And me is telling I to piss off. And someone called Conscience is at the pub. Lucky bastard.

Thankfully, Peeves chose that moment to drop a custard pie onto Sirius's head, saving his mind from the terrors of Introspection, which can only lead to Self Discovery, which usually ends in a small padded room in the mental ward. Knowing Thyself is only helpful if you've got three or fewer internal voices who can go on holiday together and not be tempted to commit murder. Unfortunately, most people have got a whole extended family in their heads, complete with feuds over Who Got Gran's Gravy Boat With the Flowers and sticky traditions about where everyone goes for Easter. Once they start down the dark and fearsome path of self-actualisation they're doomed to spend the rest of their days just going through the introductions. Had Peeves known the good turn he was doing Sirius, he would have exploded at the idea of such selflessness. As it was, he just cackled and sailed off to re-arm.

Wiping custard off his eyebrow, Sirius gave it a taste, and waited to turn into a badger. When he didn't, he concluded that Peeves had only been able to break into the kitchens, not the Potions store, and he continued on his way, slowly cleaning his face and enjoying his unexpected dessert as he thought. This was going to require subtlety. Perhaps even finesse. Probably he should do a bit of research, or at least get some pointers from Remus. But he didn't have time. He needed to talk with Ze straight off, somewhere no one could interrupt. She would tell him about it, he was sure, if she could just get a minute to put things in order.

At least, he hoped she would. She seemed to tell him everything else, which was actually quite nice. He liked talking with Ze, particularly if there wasn't really anything specific to talk about. His brows furrowed: talking about Colin Cross would not, he suspected, be pleasant, no matter how honest he was. Because somehow he didn't think that his shouting and waving his arms would convince her of Cross's true nature – which was to say that the Hufflepuff was a perfidious, prevaricating wanker. No, he would have to employ a more refined technique. Such as shouting without waving his arms. Or perhaps he could just go straight to the source. This got a smile, as he thought about the pleasure of warning Cross off, preferably with a few well placed hexes.

You're acting like her brother. The thought pulled him up short, and a small part of him sighed and said, we're never going to make it down this corridor, are we? But Sirius was too busy thinking about being Ze's brother. Because that just wasn't right. Not at all. Not even a little bit. He was not, he reminded himself, anything other than her friend, but he was definitely not her brother. And yet, wasn't that how he was acting? Ze was going on a date with a completely unacceptable guy, and his first reaction was to forbid it. Definitely brotherly behaviour. Brotherly, or boyfriend-ly. Sirius swallowed, and put that thought aside for further contemplation. After all, the Conscience would have to come home sometime – and maybe Sirius could catch him when he was pissed.

Alright, so he was acting like a brother. An older brother. Someone intent on doing the proper thing and protecting Ze's innocence and virtue. Sirius thought about this for a moment, and decided that he was never going to tell anyone such a sentence had formed in his head. It was either that, or take up a career writing Victorian romance. Ze, he reminded himself, and started moving again. The smartest thing would be to let her approach him. She was easy enough in doing it, and if she could laugh off turning him on with dragon bones, she could talk with him about going on a date. It wasn't like anything was guaranteed to happen, he reminded himself. Yeah, not at all – probably she'd go on the date and realise for herself how useless Cross was. No need to be afraid that one little trip to the village would turn into anything. He wouldn't have to watch them walk hand in hand anywhere, or see Ze smile at another bloke, or spot them snogging in the courtyard. It was just a date.

Right. Just a date. Sirius's steps sped up as he approached the common room. Somewhere in his head the Conscience and the Id stumbled to a stop beside the toe-tapping voice. By some miracle of metaphysical mechanics, there was a smell of stale beer.

'Wha' - hic - di'we miss?'

*.*.*.*

- which would probably be fun, and really, it isn't as though I've agreed to marry him – oomph!

'Sorry!' Ze said, bouncing off of something, and shaking her head.

'No worries,' Sirius replied, reaching out a hand to steady her. 'You look a bit preoccupied,' he added, with more than usual focus.

She tried to summon up a grin, but got the feeling it was more of a grimace. 'I can't quite decide if I've done something right, or stuffed it completely up.'

Both of his brows arched, and she could have sworn he almost smiled. 'Yeah? What's that?'

Ze glanced up at the portrait of the Fat Lady, who was once again watching them avidly. 'Ah…let's go in,' she suggested. The Fat lady sniffed disdainfully as she swung open, and Sirius felt his internal grin ratchet just a bit wider: Ze didn't want the whole school knowing she had a date. That had to be good.

'So?' he prodded as the crossed the common room toward the windows.

'Well you know how I've got to be friends with Colin Cross? Seventh year, Hufflepuff, plays keeper on their qui-'

'I know him,' Sirius said, trying to keep the shortness from his voice, not being in the mood for a list of Cross's attributes.

'Right,' Ze said, dropping onto the cushioned ledge of the windows. 'Well, he's asked me on a date for the weekend.'

Sirius did his best to look mildly – and noncommittally – surprised. 'Really?'

Ze gave him an odd look. 'You okay?' she asked. 'It's just, you sounded like Remus there –'

Sirius swallowed and tried to look a bit less likely to wear loafers. It wasn't as easy as he'd hoped. 'Sorry,' he mumbled.

Ze nodded absently, tapping her fingers on her drawn-up knees. 'I didn't quite realise what he was saying – he just sort of phrased it "would you like to go down to the village" and I was thinking how I need to exchange that armguard, because it doesn't fit properly, and I said "yes" and then it registered that he meant with him. Just him. No one else. Sort of out of the ether, really.'

He flirts madly with you, and can't keep his eyes off you, Sirius thought tartly. How out of the ether could it be? But what he said was, 'These things happen.'

Ze was still tapping her fingers. 'At first I was so surprised – well, that bloody flower bit me, didn't it? – and I'm rather glad that I didn't have to spend the rest of the lesson talking with him. He said I was "out of his league".'

You are! 'Well then go find him and tell him sorry, you've thought on it, and you've changed your mind,' Sirius suggested, more pleased with this turn of events than he ever could have hoped to be. 'Or, better yet, write him a note.'Ze's face came up, her eyes puzzled. 'No, you're misunderstanding,' she said, shaking her head. 'What I'm saying is that I felt awkward right after he asked me. I've been thinking it over since, and I'm actually sort of excited. I mean, he's quite a nice guy, and we get on well. I'm just afraid that if I go out with him and it doesn't work, then we won't be friends.'

'And that would be a bad thing?' Sirius asked before he could stop himself.

Ze gave him another of those narrow looks. 'You don't like him, do you?' she asked after a moment.

'What?' Sirius spluttered. 'Of course I – '

'No, I don't think you do,' she shook her head. 'You were like this in the Three Broomsticks last Saturday – you practically snarled at him. Did something happen that I don't know about?'

'No! Nothing's…happened, and I didn't snarl at him. I don't snarl at anyone,' he added, in an attempt at dignity.

'Then why don't you want me to go out with him?'

'I've never said that I don't!' Sirius cried.

Ze's cheeks flushed as she realised that, in fact, he hadn't. She had just assumed - wanted to assume – that he would. A quick glance back over their conversation told her that Sirius hadn't so much as frowned. Instead, as always, he'd sat and listened to her babble on, and made periodic non-inflammatory comments in all the right places. Even that "and that would be a bad thing?" quip had been relatively neutral, requiring her to read the snarl into it just because she'd thought…well, she'd thought he'd be angry. But he wasn't. He was just…Sirius. 'Sorry, I'm being stupid,' she managed, trying vainly to tug her hair over her heated cheeks. 'I just – you didn't seem pleased with him, and I assumed –'

'Alright,' Sirius broke in, seeming agitated for the first time. 'I don't like him, yeah? I think he's too smarmy by half, and I wouldn't trust him alone with a female goat, not to mention my girlfriend – I mean – girl - my friend – who's – my friend who's a girl. Not, you know, that other –' He broke off, nearly gouging his eye out as he attempted to rub his eyebrow. 'My point being that I don't really rate him.'

'Okay,' she nodded. 'Point taken.'

Now tell me you're going to write him a note that says "bugger off, you wanker" in no uncertain terms, Sirius mentally encouraged, wondering if perhaps it wasn't too late for him to develop telepathic powers.

'I think you're wrong, of course, but point taken.'

Well, so much for subversively planting ideas in her brain. 'So you're going?' he asked, trying to sound nonchalant and barely managing constipated.

The look she gave him said quite clearly that she was on to his game, though she kindly refrained from sardonically arching a brow. 'It's a date, Sirius, not a marriage proposal. I didn't even realise he was asking me out until I'd said yes, so it'll probably be a one time occurrence.'

'You don't fancy him, then?' he asked hopefully.

Ze snorted. 'I don't know him well enough to fancy him, do I? I suppose we'll just have to see.'

This was not encouraging news, and as Ze stared out into the gathering twilight, Sirius discovered that he was suddenly in a very foul mood indeed.

*.*.*.*

James Potter was having a bad day. A very, very bad day. He had exploded his transfiguration lesson – luckily, the peacock had been in the shape of a water goblet at the time, so it probably hadn't felt much – he had been forced to sit behind Deidre Sullivan, whose hair smelled of wildflowers, and his eye was twitching. Oh, and his hair had gone flat. Yes, it was a very bad day. The worst of it, James thought shakily as he tried not to watch Morgana Morwen lean across a table, was that every time he stared at a girl who wasn't Lily Evans, it felt like cheating.

He didn't want to watch their legs stride down the hall, or their tops gape when they leaned forward at their desks. He hated the way his eyes seemed to follow their bodies while his brain was saying "no, bad James!" in a voice that sounded strangely like his Aunt Gertrude's when she was disciplining her dogs. He didn't like those other girls, didn't have any interest in their lives, their activities, or their conversations. He just wanted their bodies. No! No, he didn't! He wanted Lily. Just Lily. And since he couldn't have her, he would just…he would learn to ignore the temptation surrounding him.

This was, he'd discovered, much more difficult than he'd assumed.

Counting the stones in the walls, the number of times Professor Kettleburn barked, even the dead things in jars in the Potions dungeon – none of it worked. Not for long, at least. So he'd attempted distraction through other routes…such as teaching himself to wiggle his ears. That had only taken six hours, nine minutes, and forty-two seconds, and then he'd had to come up with something else. Something difficult. He'd tried word puzzles, isometric exercises, and long division. After several hours he'd accidentally discovered calculus, and immediately given up – half out of confusion, and half because he didn't bloody care. He wanted Lily. He was still in the Library – books seemed to have a calming influence – and, being the masochistic sort, he was staring hopelessly at his love.

She was immersed in an enormous tome, probably the lifework of some fusty old bugger who invented anamorphic cross-pollination or something. Not that James cared. He had more important things to ponder. The way the candlelight glimmered in her hair made him think of autumn forests, precious metals, and sex. Try as he might to concentrate on the autumn forests and precious metals, his brain didn't seem to want to discuss anything but making mad and passionate love to Lily Evans. And, since it had gotten other portions of his anatomy to join the rather explicit conversation, he couldn't stand up without embarrassing himself thoroughly. You're going to die of oxygen deprivation to the brain, he thought muzzily, watching Lily's slender white fingers tuck a lock of copper silk behind her ear. That's what they mean when they say "he died of love". It's not a bloody broken heart at all – it's all the blood in your body rushing to your willy and not your head.

He needed distraction. Instant distraction, or something awful was going to happen. And he really didn't want to die in the Library. His hands scrabbled desperately across the table, dislodging heaps of parchment covered in arithmetic calculations. At last they found something solid, something promising. It was a book. James didn't bother to look at the title, he simply threw it open to a page at random and began to read. The mating habits of the Cornish Pixie are little-known, but there may be startling similarities between their Call to Fornicate and the Enticement Dance performed by the Welsh Seelie Court, and, more notably, some very intoxicated Humans….

Ten minutes later, James was stalking through the library stacks, a fanatical gleam lighting his eyes….

*.*.*.*.*

'You,' Ze informed Dorcas Thursday evening, 'are the only normal person I know.'

Dorcas's head slowly rose from her essay, and she unblinkingly watched Ze hurl herself into a chair in the Gryffindor common room. 'Have you been drinking?'

'No,' Ze snorted. 'But it's not a bad idea.'

Dorcas laid down her quill very precisely and stared around the room. She didn't see anything particularly out of the ordinary, but, then again, she knew who she was. Dorcas. Ordinary wasn't really an option. 'What's the matter?' she asked.

Ze issued another snort, this one alarmingly expressive. How was she supposed to explain that Remus was locked into a perpetual game of patience, refusing to look up from his cards? Or that Peter had suddenly decided he wanted to learn Scottish folk dance? Dorcas might be interested to know that Rob had announced his intention to take up knife fighting as it was a "healthy way of improving his reflexes", but Ze wasn't sure that Dorcas needed to know Rob intended to spend loads of time around sharp, pointy objects. That, and she was relatively sure that as soon as anyone with some authority (i.e., Lily) discovered this, Rob wouldn't be allowed near anything so dangerous as a toothbrush.

Oh, and Sirius wasn't talking.

Not to her, and not to anyone, as best she could tell. He just glared. He'd glared through their morning run, glared through lessons, through lunch, through quidditch training, and then he'd glared himself off to supper. No doubt he was now glaring his way through their Charms essay, but she wasn't about to go and see for herself. She had decided that he Needed Space. This was a term she had got off Serena, and she wasn't precisely sure what it meant, but it seemed appropriate.

'I don't know,' she settled for telling Dorcas, because it seemed vaguely like the truth. 'I just don't know.'

Dorcas might have made an answer – and it might have been a very good one, offering solutions to problems as nebulous as what to say on your first-ever date, or how to solve world poverty – but Lily chose that moment to storm through the portrait hole shouting, 'Just bugger OFF!' over her shoulder.

Everyone immediately found something to do behind a large and protective object, such as a door, a table, or the person standing in front of them. Lily had a blast range, and it was no laughing matter. But, instead of cursing Potter – it had to be Potter, she only shouted like that at Potter – into a thousand pieces, she whirled on her heel and marched across the room to the fire, a path miraculously clearing before her. Serena, who had been chatting with a good-looking sixth year, abruptly broke off her flirtations and made her way towards the steaming redhead. Only one chair separated Lily's couch from Ze and Dorcas's chairs, and Serena perched lightly on the edge of it.

'You okay?' she asked quietly.

Serena, Ze thought, was an Olympic contender when it came to asking pointless questions. But, oddly enough, it seemed to be the right question, because Lily stopped slamming her books around and looked up at her. 'Do you know what he did?' she snarled. 'Do you know what he did?' she repeated, and this time her gaze swept round to include Ze and Dorcas, and suddenly they were part of the conversation too. 'He refused to give me the book!'

'No!' Serena gasped, as though she had just received the news that Potter gobbled up live kittens.

'Ah….' Ze began, wondering if there had been lessons in Girl Speak at some point, and whether or not she had bunked off.

'Yes! He refused! Me! And then, when I asked when he thought he'd be finished with it, he actually flipped to the end and said "Well, I've got about another two hundred pages".' She stared at her three companions, expecting instant outrage on her behalf. Only Serena was shaking her head and glowering supportively. 'This is Potter I'm talking about,' Lily explained to Ze and Dorcas, as though the clarification were necessary. 'James Potter.'

'Er, yes, we had got that,' Dorcas mentioned.

'And he refused to give me a book I needed,' Lily repeated, clearly expecting this to earn the shock she hadn't gotten before.

'Well, if he was reading it…' Ze trailed off, lifting her hands in a "what's to be done?" gesture.

Serena's brows drew together as she turned toward Ze. 'He says he's in love with her,' she said, as though this laid rest to every conundrum, great or small, in the universe.

'Yes, but, we're talking about a book-' Ze began, only to be interrupted by Serena.

'It doesn't matter if it's a book or a box of diamonds – she asked him for it,' Serena said. 'He's supposed to give it.'

Dorcas was looking pensive, as though a whole new world had just been revealed, but Ze was shaking her head. 'No, I'm sorry, but no. He was reading the book, he said he'd hand it off when he finished – that's fair as fair can be.'

'Yes,' Serena said triumphantly, 'but "all's fair in love and war" – which means that even unfairness is fair, which means he should give her the book.'

'You've never heard of a syllogism, have you? No? Didn't think so.' Ze turned to Lily. 'Are you really that upset?'

Lily was shaking her head, her temper seeming to have ebbed now that James was on the other side of a wall – even if he did have The Book. 'No, I just, well, I was so surprised – that he was reading, I mean. It's not like he's never refused to share something before – he's always telling me I can't have things unless I give him a kiss, or hiding them so that I have to keep pestering him to get them back. It's quite annoying, and I can't understand why he does it.'

So you'll talk to him, Ze thought with a touch of sadness. So you'll know he's there.

'But the point is, he seemed to actually be reading it, which can't be right. This is Einschetter we're talking about.' This time, all three of them looked blank. 'You know, he wrote I Do: An Answer to "Who Knows What Terror Lurks in the Heart of Men?"' This failed to rouse so much as a flicker of recognition, even from Dorcas. 'Well, he was a sort of explorer, obsessed with the human condition. He never put his quill down, wrote all these treatises on the brain, and human interaction. And one about dormice, although I've never figured it out. The point is, he never really stopped writing, so in the middle of a paragraph about nightmares you'll find a grocery list with the ingredients for sticky pudding and a side note about how Auntie Norwegia doesn't like fish. It's enough to drive anyone mad, so no one bothers with reading the entire book - mostly people just find him in a footnote in some other text and look up the pertinent page. Brilliant man, really, shame about the toupee.'

Ze glanced furtively at Dorcas and Serena to see if either of them had caught that last. Both of them were looking slightly glazed. 'Um, what about the toupee, exactly?'

'Oh,' Lily shrugged absently. 'It ate him.'

'It…ate him…'

'Yeah,' she yawned. 'Left a few bones and his signet ring – that was how they knew it was him. They never caught it, either, although it did rampage through a marketplace before it disappeared completely.'

Ze stared at Lily, wondering if the redhead knew that her conversation had quite a bit in common with taking a bludger to the head. 'Mmmmm,' she mumbled, for lack of anything more articulate.

Lily was just opening her mouth to continue this heart-stopping storyline when a cool, posh voice said, 'Lily, you look positively knackered.'

Everyone, even Serena and Dorcas, jerked round to see Grace, standing just on the other side of a small table, her hair shimmering in the firelight. 'Ah,' Lily began, clearly unsure of how to respond to this less-than-polite comment on her health.

'Has Potter been after you again?' Grace continued. 'Insufferable git.'

Lily shrugged lightly, and Ze couldn't tell if she was trying to play off her upset over James, or if she just wanted to be rid of Grace's presence. Unfortunately, Serena had other ideas.

'We should have a hens night!' she cried suddenly, bouncing up from her chair. 'It's been a completely crap day for all of us – we should just sit in and do nothing.'

Ze found herself exchanging a horrified look with Dorcas: they knew all about doing nothing. It involved criminal amounts of giggling, and enough "beauty products" to thoroughly pollute the Aegean. Periodically – usually after one of them had lost a boyfriend, or got a massive spot on their nose – Lily, Serena, and Grace would have a hens night, coating their faces with mud and sprawling on someone's bed whilst they varnished their toenails and nattered about pointless things. 'That sounds brilliant,' Lily said, sounding more cheerful than she had moments before. 'You don't have anything to else, do you?' she asked, and Ze and Dorcas started when they realised that she was addressing them.

'Of course she doesn't!' Serena beamed, missing Lily's inclusion of Dorcas and dropping onto the arm of Ze's chair. 'Everyone deserves a break from it sometime.'

Much to Ze's surprise, however, Serena seemed genuinely happy about the idea of having herself along. Grace, however, did not. 'Oh, we wouldn't want to hold you up,' she was saying, but Lily interrupted her.

'Serena's right – we all deserve a break. The past fortnight's been nothing but disaster after disaster, and I, personally, could do with a bit of a laugh.' She turned to Dorcas and Ze, her brows arched in blatant competition. 'You in?'

In? Ze thought with a swallow. It's a sleepover, not a bloody war. 'Sure,' she shrugged. 'Dorcas and I've been dying for something to take our minds off…stuff.'

Serena didn't bat an eye at the inclusion of Dorcas, but Grace visibly sneered, her lip actually curling. 'Fine,' she sniffed. 'I'll meet you upstairs.' And with that, she turned on her heel and strode off.

'I'll get food,' Serena offered, beaming round. 'Anyone have any particular requests?'

'Chocolate,' Lily said immediately. 'And crisps, and olives.' She turned to Dorcas and Ze. 'The house elves adore her – if you've got anything you particularly fancy, she can get it off them.'

'Ummm,' Ze thought.

'Bananas,' Dorcas promptly replied. 'As many as you can get, and chocolate sauce.'

'Oooh – good idea, I love bananas,' Serena grinned. 'You Zaz?' she asked, and Ze felt her brows arch at the familiarisation of her name.

'Ah, some crisps, if they have them? Doesn't matter what sort, really…'

'Done,' the brunette said happily. 'See you in a bit!' and with that, she scampered off to the portrait hole. On her way out, she passed Sirius just coming in, and her smile hitched a bit as he glowered at her. His eyes met Ze's over Serena's shoulder, and he walked – or, rather, stomped - in her direction.

'I'll just gather these up,' Lily said, noticing his approach. 'Help me carry everything, Dorcas? I'd hate to drop one –' Dorcas immediately gathered up the books with all the love and tenderness of a mother, and she and Lily hurried toward the girls' stair. 'Hurry after,' Lily called over her shoulder, just as Sirius reached Ze.

'Hurry after what?' he scowled.

'Er, we're sitting in… although I'm really not sure what from,' Ze admitted, standing and shuffling her hands into her pockets. 'The words "hens night" have been mentioned,' she added with a grimace, and was rewarded with a horrified snort from Sirius. 'It isn't funny!' she said. 'They're being very…nice. And they invited Dorcas.'

'Well,' he mocked, 'if they invited Dorcas -'

'I don't know what's buggered your arse, but unless you're going to tell me about it, piss off,' she snapped. He'd ignored her the entire day, and now he was picking at her – not what she was in the mood for.

Unexpectedly, the scowl lifted from his face and he scrubbed a hand over it. 'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'I'm just in a mood.'

'What from?' she asked, dropping onto the couch and kicking at his knee to urge him to do the same.

For a moment he resisted, and then buckled backward, landing in a sprawl. 'Nothing,' he shrugged. Ze leant back into the cushions and waited. That was all you had to do, really. Just wait. After a few minutes of staring into the fire, Sirius rolled his head round on the back of the couch and changed his view to that of the ceiling. 'Grace talked to me, just now.'

'Oh,' Ze said, her stomach clenching unexpectedly. 'Yeah?'

'Yeah,' he nodded, and for the first time in her life, Ze found herself agreeing that males were obnoxiously uncommunicative.

Another few minutes passed in complete silence. 'So,' Ze finally prompted, 'what did she want?'

'Who?' Sirius asked.

'Grace!' You prat!

'Oh.' Pause. 'Nothing.'

Ze briefly wondered if he was doing it on purpose, and then put the thought out of her mind: Sirius was devious, but he wasn't cruel. 'She just wanted to say "wotcha, how's that Charms essay coming?",' she heard herself asking. 'Somehow, I don't believe –'

'I don't want to talk about it, alright?'

Immediately she desisted. Clearly, he wasn't over his ex-girlfriend. There was enough misery in his voice that she would have shaved all her hair off if he'd said it would make him feel better. But, since he didn't make the request, she settled for sliding across the couch and tucking her arm through his, dipping her head onto his shoulder in a sort of half hug of unmitigated support. 'Alright,' she said quietly, and was relieved to hear him sigh with what she hoped was relief. A moment later his head dropped to rest atop hers, and he pulled her arm closer into his side.

'Sorry I've been an ass,' he murmured.

'Sorry I was picking at you,' she replied.

There were several long moments of silence while they both relaxed into shared company. 'Has Remus put down the cards yet?' he finally asked in a lazy voice.

Ze, her own eyes half shut in the warmth, chuckled. 'No – but given that Peter's practising the steps to his favourite jig, you can't really blame him.'

'Rob says he's taking up knife fighting.'

'James is reading a book.'

This had Sirius's head jerking up, and Ze tilted her own so that she could grin up at his horrified expression. 'No,' he gasped.

'Oh yes,' she replied, relishing the moment. 'He's so engrossed he actually refused to surrender it to Lily. He didn't even try to get a kiss off her.'

Sirius dropped back down, his eyes still puzzled. 'I don't believe it.'

'Apparently it's some sort of thick rubbish, impossible to understand, so maybe he's just doing it for show,' she shrugged.

'No, he's not,' Sirius immediately replied. 'He's doing it to distract himself.'

And just like that, Ze got it. Got why James was reading and Remus solitaire-ing and Peter reeling. She could even vaguely see why Rob was suddenly obsessed with knives. They were trying to dispel lust. No wonder the Victorians had been so keen on hobbies… 'I think you've got the best end of it so far,' she said with a faint grin. 'Running's loads better than cards.'

'Too right,' he yawned. 'Speaking of which, will you be up for it tomorrow morning?'

'Course,' she replied, slightly offended. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

'Hens night,' he reminded her, waggling his brows.

'Oh please, that's just a lot of passing nail varnishes,' she scoffed. 'Hardly exhausting.'

'It is not,' Sirius said, looking vaguely offended. 'You'll be up half the night, comparing blokes and giggling about who you'd rather shag.' Ze gave him a withering look. 'Won't you?' he asked, sounding less sure of himself.

'Not likely,' she laughed. 'Although I'm sure I'll learn loads of arcane secrets of seduction – Serena does take Witch Weekly, after all. Other than that, it's all chocolate and bananas.'

His brows furrowed completely. 'Bananas?' he repeated.

'Mmm,' she nodded, standing and grabbing up her bag from the floor. 'Essential to a hens night, bananas. I'd better get up there or I'll miss all the fun with the mud masques. See you tomorrow for a run?'

'I still don't understand – '

'I'll be down at seven – don't be late,' she called, and pounded up the stair.

'Bananas,' Sirius repeated. And then: 'Girls. They really are from another planet.'

*.*.*.*.*

'- haven't seen it in ages, and it's my favourite one.' Lily scrabbled out from under her bed and peered up at Ze. 'Oh, there you are! Is Serena back yet? I'd kill for an olive.'

'No,' Ze said, wondering if rationality had taken the night off officially, or if it was just drowsing in a corner somewhere. 'Haven't seen her since she left,' she added, kicking off her shoes, and surprising herself by adding, 'I'd kill for an olive, too. You don't think there's a chance she'll bring up a cheese platter, do you?'

'Probably,' Grace shrugged, surprising Ze by actually acknowledging her presence. 'She usually gets a bit of everything.'

'I've got this stuff my Aunt Marge gave me at my birthday,' Dorcas said, emerging from her wardrobe holding a basket full of blue glass bottles with curly silver stoppers. 'She swears by it for skin.'

'Looks nice –' Lily began, but Grace interrupted by letting out a wheezing gasp and pressing her hand to her chest.

'Oh. My. God.' She whispered. 'Have you any idea what that is?'

'Er…stuff in posh bottles?' Dorcas hazarded.

'That is the entire line of Eulalia Moncrue's Exquisite Facial Elixirs! It's the bloody Holy Grail of skin products – and she's got the Emergency Repair crème too….ooooh,' she moaned, practically petting the basket, which Dorcas was nervously clutching to her chest.

'Well, I've never used it, so there's plenty to go round…' she said hesitantly, and Grace positively salivated. 'You could, you know, let me put it down,' Dorcas suggested, and Grace immediately jerked back, recovering herself with a toss of her golden hair.

'Well, I suppose that might be alright,' she said, and then hurried back to her own vanity to see if she could produce anything even half as good.

'She's really odd,' Dorcas whispered, edging over to Ze and Lily and adjusting her bow.

'This is really nice face stuff, Dorcas – thanks for sharing,' Lily replied, setting the box onto the bed. 'I've got some nail stuff, if anyone wants to do a manicure.'

Ze glanced down at her hands, at the over-long fingers with their short, battered nails. 'Ah, maybe later,' she said, resisting the urge to hide the appendages in question in her pockets. 'I'll just, er, change into my pyjamas…'

'Food's here!' Serena cried from the door, her body almost entirely concealed by a mound of bags and boxes. There was a crack and two house elves wearing tea-towel togas appeared, pushing a cart piled high with everything from truffles to toast…and what looked to be a full silver tea service. 'They insisted on doing hot cocoa,' Serena explained, shuffling the food in her arms onto her bed and bending down shake hands with the two tiny elves. 'Thanks so much,' she said, and they squeaked out replies before disappearing the way they had come.

'I don't get it,' Lily said, shaking her head. 'Anyone who can find the kitchen can get a few snacks, but they'll actually come up here well after supper for you.'

'We trade recipes,' Serena shrugged. 'I gave the head chef my recipe for raspberry tarts, and she gave me hers for pastry shells. We've been fast friends ever since.'

'She's going to be a cook,' Lily explained to Ze and Dorcas, who were eyeing the mounds of food in shock.

'Or own a clothing shop, I haven't decided,' Serena added, pulling a long silky nightdress out of her wardrobe. 'Now,' she grinned, 'let the festivities begin!'

*.*.*.*'Did anyone else notice,' Zeke asked, 'that there's a lot of laughing on the girls' side tonight?'

He and Rob had just wandered into the boys' seventh to find Sirius, Remus, and Peter sprawled on their beds. Remus was engrossed in a game of cards, and Peter was mumbling "step, turn, kick" over and over, but this seemed relatively normal. Quiet, even. No one had seen James since dinner.

'They're having a hens night,' Sirius yawned, putting aside the book he'd been reading.

'A hens night?' Remus repeated, looking up from his cards, his eyes a little wild. 'What for?'

'Dunno,' Sirius shrugged. 'Ze just said they were sitting in. I don't think she knew why.'

'You don't think,' Peter began nervously, 'that they know, do you?'

'Know wh- ooooohh,' Zeke said, nervously rubbing his bald head. 'I see. That's not good. What if they do? Know about the bet, I mean?

'No, they can't,' Rob scoffed. 'Who'd have told them?' Sirius shifted uncomfortably: he hadn't told Ze, but she definitely knew…

'But if they're laughing…' Remus trailed.

'Oh, girls always laugh on a hen's night,' Rob said dismissively. 'That's what they're for. A bunch of them get together and sit around in their underwear eating ice cream and talking about how they're so much better than guys. And then they practise kissing with one another.'

There was a long, pregnant pause while each and every one of them tried very hard not to think about the seventh year Gryffindor girls practising kissing on one another. Remus let out a strangled little groan. 'Kissing?' Peter whispered.

'Yeah, and then one of them tells the others how to give a blow job,' Rob said with absolutely authority.

'That why you always got invited, eh Rob?' Sirius asked, laughing. 'As the voice of experience?'

'Fuck off,' Rob said, flipping his fingers up while the others laughed. 'I'm serious. They all get ice lollies or bananas or summat, and one of 'em demonstrates how to go about it without gagging.'

Everyone else continued to laugh, assuming that Rob was –as usual- taking the piss, but Sirius went still. Bananas.

'You – hahaha – you mean – ha – Lily Evans is sitting over there with a banana half down her throat?' Zeke roared. 'You're mental!'

'I am not –' Rob cried hotly. 'I'm telling you, it's the truth!'

'Oh right –' Remus chortled, ''cos you've been to so many –'

'No, I think he might be right,' Sirius said, and at the tremor in his voice all the rest shut up.

'Wh-what?' Peter sputtered.

'I think he might be right – no, really Moony. She said – Ze did- well, she said that Serena had gone off to get a bunch of bananas,' he admitted.

There was another, longer, silence.

'Bananas,' Remus whispered.

'Real bananas?'

'Er, I think…' Sirius said nervously.

They all stared at one another, the implications of this sinking in. Ze wouldn't joke about things like that. She knew how the male mind worked. And she didn't know how the female mind did. So, ten to one, she was going to be as surprised about the bananas as they were.

'The only question,' Rob said hoarsely, 'is how we're going to get a look through the window.'

*.*.*.*.*

'You have got the healthiest follicles I've ever seen.'

'Er, thanks?' Ze tried. 'I mean, they're absolutely perfect – what sort of shampoo do you use?'

Trying to ignore the fact that Serena was picking through her hair in a manner that reminded Ze of chimpanzees grooming one another, she held very still. 'Er, it comes in a green bottle. I think.'

'Could I borrow it sometime?' Serena asked, giving Ze's scalp a final inspection and dropping back onto her pillow to have another handful of crisps.

'Sure,' Ze shrugged. 'Any time you like.' She gave her toes a wiggle, admiring the way the light reflected off her toenails, which were now painted a deep, sparkling scarlet. She hadn't felt up to a face masque just yet, but Lily and Dorcas were partaking, and so far no one had stared screaming about acid burns.

'Dorcas,' Lily said, lifting a slice of cucumber off one eye to peer at the other girl, 'this stuff is divine.'

'Mmm,' Dorcas agreed, adjusting her own cucumbers and reclining back on her bed. 'It does smell a bit like cats, though.'

Serena sniffed experimentally, and laughed. 'Gah, it does, doesn't it? Well, we can open the window when it gets too bad. Ze, pass us the olives, would you?'

Passing the neat little china bowl full of tiny nibbles, Ze leant back against the foot of Serena's four-poster and decided that she really was having a good time. So far she'd had Serena tell her that she should buy something in "burnt rust" (Ze assumed this was a colour, but hadn't yet had the courage to ask) as it would be perfect for her, and Lily inform her that she had "model perfect feet". Ze, who thought of her feet as the wonderful things that got her where she needed to be, had never considered the possibility of chiropodal pulchritude. Still, she had to admit that she liked having red toenails. There was just something about it that said hello. She could almost consider the possibility of thinking about trying on a pair of open-toed shoes.

Dorcas, too, had been an unexpectedly enjoyable companion. Grace had attempted to needle her early in the evening, and Dorcas had simply adjusted the collar of her prim pyjama top, saying, 'You do know that you've got chocolate all down your face, don't you?' Shortly thereafter, Grace had retreated to the toilet with the basket of Eualalia Moncrue's magical face potions. It was non-verbally agreed that the air had immediately got much clearer.

'So,' Lily said, pushing up onto her elbows and dropping her cucumber slices into the bin, 'what's this about you going out with Colin Cross, Ze?'

Ze immediately started. 'Uuuuuhmmm…'

'Yes,' Dorcas agreed, peeling off her own cucumbers and staring at Ze out of the midst of a face painted toxic green with mud. 'I've heard a few rumours myself. Who is he?'

'He's in Hufflepuff,' Serena provided. 'And quite good-looking,' she added in a teasing voice.'

'And athletic –' Lily laughed as Ze began to blush.

'And clever – ' Serena continued.

'And nice – '

'And he asked me to go to the village with him in Herbology, Dorcas,' Ze broke in, finding that she was laughing herself. It was, after all, good-natured teasing. 'And I'd said yes before I even realised it. He is very nice, though,' she added, her eyes dropping to her toes as her cheeks heated again.

'Who's nice?' Grace asked from the door to the loo.

'Colin Cross,' Serena chortled. 'He's going out with Zaz,' she explained in a sing-song voice.

'Oh, isn't he that Hufflepuff?' Grace asked, her eyes coolly surveying Ze. 'The one with the sort of a squint?'

'He doesn't squint,' Ze automatically replied.

'Oh, sorry,' Grace said, not sounding sorry at all. 'I'm sure you'd know of course, being so up close and personal…'

Though Grace hadn't said anything definitively insulting, Ze found herself bristling. It was impossible not to, in response to that tone. 'I don't actually know him that much,' she said. 'I've just met him recently, but he's nice.'

'Doesn't he play against you at quidditch?' Grace asked innocently.

'Yeah, he's Hufflepuff's keeper, isn't he?' Serena asked, displaying a surprising knowledge of sport.

'Not that it matters,' Lily added hastily.

'No, not at all,' Grace agreed, settling onto her bed and patting her perfect, luminescent skin. 'It must just be nice for Gryffindor to have you around to…distract him, mm?' she said with a coy smile.

This is how it is, Ze thought in wonderment. This is how girls fight one another – all veiled insults and smirking innuendo. Stabbing one another and smiling the whole bloody time. 'I'd hardly consider myself a distraction,' she said flatly, determined not to rise to the bait.

'Have you decided what you're wearing?' Serena asked, obviously trying to lighten the mood. Grace rolled her eyes and turned away to her vanity, taking up a pot of cream and beginning to rub it onto her cheeks.

'Er…clothes?' Ze said tentatively. Even Dorcas sighed in pity.

'You'll want something cute –'

'But warm –'

'Have you got a nice jacket – '

'No pullovers –'

'What about my grey jumper – you're welcome to borrow it – '

'What do you think, jeans? It is the first date –'

'And just to the village –'

'Clothes!' Ze cried. 'I will be wearing clothes! And trousers, because I haven't got any skirts, and maybe my pullover, because it's comfortable and – well, I'll decide on the rest when I get there!'

Serena and Lily were staring at her with obvious disappointment.

'You can help me choose on Saturday,' Ze said grudgingly.

'And maybe you'll wear my grey jumper?' Serena asked hopefully.

'Maybe,' Ze allowed.

'Alright,' Lily nodded, her tone saying that if that was the best they could get then perhaps they would make do with it.

Serena, however, had moved on to other topics. 'So,' she asked mischievously, 'have you decided whether you're going to kiss him or not?'

Lily laughed and Dorcas cracked a smile, but it was Grace's snort – issued with her back still turned as though she had no interest in the conversation - that goaded Ze into saying, 'I dunno. I suppose I'll just have to see if he's worth it.'

'Worth it?' Serena cried. 'Have you seen him smile? Have you noticed those dimples? Bugger the rest of the day – just drag him off into the woods and let him snog you senseless!'

Ze laughed at Serena's obviously hyperbolic enthusiasm, but her comment had Grace turning round in her seat to say, 'It isn't a smart trick to let a guy get his hand up your top straight off, Serena. I'd have thought Adam Winter taught you that.'

Serena blushed scarlet, but managed a shaky laugh. 'At least I enjoyed it, yeah?'

Dorcas bit into a banana slowly and said, 'I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to let someone put his hand up my shirt,' she said pensively. Everyone, even Grace, waited with bated breath for the rest of this statement. Dorcas's eyes settled on Serena, and she adjusted her glasses. 'That takes a lot of confidence in your body, knowing that a boy's going to be gagging to get his hands on it.'

'Well, not really,' Serena sighed ruefully. 'He was just a very persuasive kisser.'

'Which is an excellent reason for why you arrived home with your bra in your pocket,' Grace said drily. Serena flinched again, but to Ze's amazement, didn't punch Grace's smarmy face in. When Serena made no move to defend herself, Grace seemed to almost swell with smugness, and her eyes cut toward Lily. 'Of course, some people have got far too much moral fibre to be caught with their hands down someone's trousers.'

Lily's pale cheeks flushed the tiniest bit, but she refused to be drawn. 'If I ever meet someone who snogs well enough, who knows where my hands might end up?'

Serena sniggered, and Grace shot her a nasty look. 'Don't tell me you've finally come round to the idea of doing more than lying back and thinking of England,' Grace mocked.

Lily's eyes narrowed: this was a bit cruel, even for Grace. But Ze could see how it worked. Boys did it to, comparing experience, asserting dominance. Here it was more subversive, because Grace was barely holding the line that this was a friendly little chat, but it was the same thing. And it was the reason Serena didn't stand up – Grace made her feel inferior, and she acted as though she were. The scathing comments and cutting looks hurt, but Grace always managed them with a smile and a laugh, so they were really just jokes. And as long as she kept making them, Grace would always be on top. 'There's nothing wrong with having sex, Grace,' Lily managed in passably nonchalant tones. 'Or with having your bra off in a broom cupboard, if it comes to it. I'm just holding out for the right guy and the right time.'

'Which is exactly how I feel,' Serena said, raising an imaginary glass. 'Cheers.'

Grace, incensed at Lily's refusal to be baited, turned a venomous smile on Serena. 'And what, exactly, have you got left to hold?'

Serena's smile vanished in record time, and Lily's eyes narrowed. 'There's a saying, Grace, that comes to mind,' Ze found herself informing the blond. '"If you can't say anything nice, then leave us the hell alone". Why don't you shut your gob and think on it, yeah?'

Grace let out a tinkling little laugh, her eyes as cold as ice. 'I was only joking.'

'No,' Ze said flatly, 'you weren't. And it wasn't funny.'

Grace's pretty face contorted in a moment, and when she spoke her voice was anything but sweet. 'Colin Cross only asked you out because he figures that if you'll shag Sirius Black, you'll shag anyone.'

'Well Grace, since you and I are the only two in the school who've shagged Sirius, I guess that tells you Colin at least has good taste.'

'Fuck off,' Grace said, but it was a weak riposte and she knew it. With a huff, she jerked her bed curtains closed, leaving the other four to sit in awkward silence.

'You shouldn't have said that,' Serena finally murmured.

'She as good as called you a slag, Serena,' Lily said, still glaring at Grace's bed curtains. 'And it isn't the first time –'

'She doesn't mean it personally,' Serena interrupted. 'She really doesn't! She's had a hard day and she wanted to let off a bit of steam, that's all. It's just that everyone thinks you're getting together with Sirius, Ze, when he's really getting back with her.'

Everyone froze.

Finally, when it felt like there was a bit of air in her lungs again, Ze said, 'What?'

It came out as a weak rasp, but Serena heard it. 'I think –' she broke off, looking nervously at Grace's bed. 'I – never mind.'

'No, don't "never mind", Serena,' Lily said impatiently. 'Grace has been dribbling poison in your ear for ages. And yes, I'll grant you she's been a right cow since she broke up with Sirius, but she wasn't precisely nice before that.'

'And she talks about you,' Dorcas said flatly, surprising everyone. 'She's Potions partners with Amelia Highsmith, and she spreads rumours about you to her. She told Amelia that you'd – well, she told her some not-very-nice things about you and someone called Rupert.'

'She didn't!' Serena cried, her eyes lighting with fury. 'Grace!' there was no answer form the shut-off bed. 'Probably warded her bed for sound,' she snarled. 'Well then, I don't care if she hears me or not. The only reason she's in a strop is because she chucked Sirius thinking he'd never get over her, and then he starts hanging round with you,' she said significantly to Ze, 'and now she's decided she wants him back because she's jealous. And she thinks she's going to get him, but I saw her trying to talk with him earlier and he was practically running away. Serves her right, the lying bitch.'

Dorcas, Lily, and Ze blinked in unison. This was such a far cry from the normally cheerful Serena that it was almost impossible to imagine this narrow-eyed being bent on vengeance was the same laughing girl of moments before. 'Wow,' Dorcas said.

'I've had enough of it,' Serena said adamantly. 'I've had enough of following her along, and having her tell me I'm stupid and – and –' she took a deep breath and seemed to deflate. 'And I really don't want to ever talk to her again, because the minute I do she'll have me falling right back in line.'

'Not if you don't let her,' Lily pointed out gently.

'You don't get it, do you?' Serena asked with a bitter laugh. 'She's got this way about her, and even when you know she's saying things just to hurt you, you know she's only doing it because she can. It's like – it's like a power she has over you, that you'll let her hurt you. And the meaner she is, the more you want her to approve of you. For ages she laughed at me because I'd only snog boys, and she was doing all sorts of things with them. And then I went and let Adam Highsmith feel me up, and suddenly the whole school knew – because she told everyone. And I've always known she did, but I just didn't want to think it was true. I wanted to think that she – that she liked me enough not to do that. But afterward, there wasn't any point, was there? No matter what I did, I was never going to catch her up.'

Two tears were trickling down her face, and she viciously swept them away, shaking her head. 'I've never understood it! She's done everything I have, but no one calls her slag behind her back - and no one treats her like an idiot!'

'Serena,' Lily said, 'No one thinks you're a slag –'

'Oh yes they do,' Serena gasped, impatiently wiping away more tears. 'And they think I'm stupid, too – Silly Serena, who fancies herself in love with any boy who looks her way. Stupid Serena, who giggles and goes on about shoes and doesn't have a thought in her head. I'm not dumb! I'm not! I can't help it if I'm romantic, that I want to fall in love with someone, and have him fall in love with me. That's just how I am!'

'Of course it is,' Dorcas said calmly. 'And there's nothing wrong with it,' she added when Ze and Lily looked at her. 'Even I know that.'

'Well, Grace doesn't. She makes fun of me for thinking that maybe, this time, I've found the right bloke.' Serena sniffed angrily. 'And she teases me because I read romance novels. But I don't care. Its not like shagging is that much fun in real life, so I might as well read about someone enjoying it.'

Ze stared at Serena for a long moment, and then burst out laughing. 'You read mucky novels? I love it!'

'God, that's brilliant!' Lily laughed. 'What's your favourite sort?'

Serena sniffled and wiped her face again. 'You – you don't think it's stupid?'

'My mother gets the historical ones,' Dorcas mused. 'They aren't very helpful though, since I don't think I'll ever go anywhere wearing a ball gown and chemise.'

'But you don't think I'm weird, for reading them?' Serena repeated, looking between them.

Ze shrugged. 'I've never read a romance novel, and I've never had sex, so I can't really compare. But if nothing else, a mucky book is a mucky book – and who doesn't want to think that somewhere out there is a gorgeous, rugged man just waiting to shag you rotten?'

'Yeah,' Lily grinned. 'And who doesn't cherish a fond dream of one day coming across a colossal shaft of desire?'

They all looked at one another and burst into giggles. 'My favourite is "engorged manhood",' Serena gasped through her laughter. 'It's just so bloody stupid!'

'Have you got any with you?' Dorcas asked. 'Novels, I mean, not engorged manhoods?' she was grinning as she said it, and they all lost control again.

'Yes, I have,' Serena finally managed to say, half-tumbling off the bed to rummage in her trunk. 'Would you rather have The Highland Hussy or Duke of Desire?'

'Has The Highland Hussy got accents?' Ze asked.

'Of course it does,' Lily said, grabbing from Serena's hand to scan the back cover. 'Looks like our fearless hero is none other than the rugged – well done, Zaz – MacLeod, sworn never to wed.'

Dorcas leaned forward to examine the front jacket. 'Are his tits supposed to be bigger than hers?'

'I think it's got something to do with the toughening-up factor of Scottish winters,' Ze explained.

'Our heroine is called Amoria – stupid name, that – ' Lily was reading. 'Let's see, mm, and – yes! – she's sworn to be no man's possession. Their tempers clash in a fiery battle on the wild moors of the Highlands! Will MacLeod remain true to his vow to be a hardened warrior all his days, or will this wanton temptress melt his stony heart?' Lily dropped her dramatic reading voice and nodded. 'This is quality stuff. Now, Serena, where do we find the best description of heated Highland desire?'

Serena grinned broadly and leaned back against her pillow, all tears forgotten. 'Oh, I think you want page fifty-seven.'

*.*.*.*

'Almost there – almost there -'

'YES!' Remus hissed as Rob managed to hook the wire through the latch on the window. Slowly, with utmost care, Rob inched the mullioned pane open and, moving slowly and silently, the rest of the boys teetered along the narrow battlement encircling Gryffindor Tower.

A complex conversation in military hand-signs ensued, and in the end Remus was boosted atop Zeke's shoulders. 'Now,' Rob said close against Remus's ear, 'you just pop your head up and see if you can spot any bananas. If you do, hold down two fingers and we'll pass you the camera, right?'

'Right,' Remus breathed in reply.

'Ready?' Sirius whispered.

'Ready.'

Slowly Zeke stood to his full height, Remus's head rising up and up until he was crouched just below the open window. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he clamped his wand between and his teeth and, gripping the outer edges of the ledge with both hands, gingerly inched his head up until he was peering furtively over the sill of the window. What he saw had his brows furrowing and his head popping up another degree. Wait a second… There were six beds in the room, not five, and all but one of them had the curtains drawn. A single candle was floating by the unoccupied bed, and Remus poked his head slightly into the room, peering round the window frame to see if, perhaps he was missing something.

What he saw had him freezing in place. Sandra Widdles, a portly sixth year with one enormous black eyebrow, was standing in front of a mirror hung immediately beside the window, using her wand to pluck long, curling hairs from her chin. 'Euuugh,' Remus said before he could stop himself.

Sandra turned, 'Huh?'

'Errprpgh!' Remus cried around the wand clutched in his mouth.

'Arrgggh!' Sandra shouted.

And then she punched him in the face.

'Abort, abort!' someone below cried as Remus flailed backwards off of Zeke's shoulders.

Inside the room Sandra was shouting, 'It's those bloody zombies again! Get them! Quick!'

Well below the window a groaning heap of Gryffindor boys were scrabbling over one another, desperately trying to get back round the battlement and through their own windows before the alarm was well and truly raised. Slipping and sliding across the rain-slicked stone, they pushed one another upright and stampeded around the curve of the tower. Rob and Zeke were through the window first, followed by Peter, who dove through with impressive and unexpected grace. Remus and Sirius collided, their heads bumping painfully.

Both stepped back, clutching their craniums, and looked up at one another. Black and green greasepaint was smudged and running in the rain, leaving behind patches of grey green skin. Remus's eye was beginning to swell, and Sirius had a goose egg forming on his forehead.

'No bananas?' Sirius asked dazedly.

'No,' Remus replied, equally blurred. 'Just a gorilla.'

A/N - how's that for a quick update, hm? of course, I couldn't resist having a night in. another delightfully over-played ruse...of course, Grace is a - well, the nicest word is cow, so we'll just leave it at that. she'll be back, don't worry, as will our manhood-obsessed novel-reading heroines (although none of them are going to be wearing ball gowns or chemises. and i don't think there will be any rugged Highland warriors. but i can never be positive...)

perhaps we'll even discover what James is so fervently researching... and, of course, why it will involve he and his fellow Marauders streaking the grounds sans wardrobe ;)

thanks to all who've been reading and reviewing - repeat!


	25. Garden Variety

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Warning: There is some rather frank discussion of sex in the following chapter. If you disapprove of premarital sex, or the discussion thereof, please note that you may be uncomfortable. If you choose to leave a review voicing your discomfort, please be respectful and consider both the mature rating and this warning.

Chapter 25: Garden Variety

'I'm sorry, but that just doesn't sound like any fun at all,' Ze said, tossing an olive into the air and catching it deftly in her mouth.

Lily lowered The Highland Hussy with a laugh. 'Which - the "floating on a golden sea of passion, replete with bliss", or the "meeting him thrust for thrust, her untutored body engaging in the primal rhythm on instinct"?'

They were all laughing raucously, and Ze rolled onto her stomach, wiping at her eyes. 'Either – both,' she sniggered. 'Sounds like a load of rubbish, to me. And really, she's just lying there moaning, making poor MacLeod do all the work! S'great fantasy, having a man who doesn't require any help to shag your head off, but you can't help feeling that there's a lot of important details getting left out.'

Serena chuckled wetly, pushing a pile of crisp packets onto the floor. 'It's completely unrealistic,' she grinned. 'Nothing about how they lose their balance - or how they drip sweat all on you.'

'It seems like it would be so much messier,' Lily said contemplatively, chewing on a licorice wand. 'In reality, I mean. Clothes going everywhere, bodies sticking together…'

'I just can't imagine any bloke we know being strong enough to rip a nightdress down the middle, let alone cart a girl off to bed,' Dorcas agreed, tossing another banana peel in the direction of the rubbish basket.

'Or knowing what to do once he got her there,' Ze laughed.

'They are much better adapted to broom cupboards,' Serena agreed, chuckling. 'Not that they're much good there either, mind you,' she added with a sigh. 'I've given up shagging, after what happened over the holiday.' When the others shot her questioning glances, she shrugged. 'Guy named Marcus. I had thought maybe someone a year or two older would be at least a little, well, better, but I was wrong. He had even less of an idea of what to do than Algernon Gettlesby. And he ruined my favourite dress.'

'So how many people have you shagged, then?' Dorcas asked, unabashedly curious.

'Just the two,' Serena replied without a hint of self-consciousness. 'Algie and Marcus. I know people say that it's more than that, but they're wrong. I've snogged a few others, of course, and fooled around a little, but not as much as - well, anyway. The fact is, I just don't think that sex with guys our own age is ever going to be much good. As best I can tell, their interest is in quantity, not quality.'

'Do they really not care who they shag as long as they're getting off?' Lily asked, and Ze was surprised to see that the redhead was addressing her, not Sereana.

'Er, what you asking me for?' she asked, confused.

'Well you're friends with them, aren't you?' Dorcas asked as though this were obvious – which, Ze supposed, it rather was. 'You're bound to know more about how they think than we do.'

Ze felt her brows arch and lips purse of their own accord: she had never really thought of it that way, but she supposed that Dorcas was right. She'd spent years listening to her friends talk about what they liked in a girl, and what they wanted. And, more often than not, what they wanted centred around sex. She had never taken it personally, because sex was something everyone was curious about. Okay, so their manner of discussing it was a bit crude, but…

'I'd never thought of that,' Serena said to Dorcas, her head whipping back to Ze. 'You're like the ultimate double agent, aren't you? You've known them for years, you've heard them talk about all sorts of stuff, haven't you? What's it like for them, then? Sex, I mean.'

Ze licked her lips. This felt, oddly enough, like a betrayed confidence. But then, it wasn't like she was going to mention names – it was just general information, right? And maybe, if she explained things, everyone would get on a little better, because then they'd understand one another. Surely that made sense. Surely. Licking her lips again, she chose her words with care. 'I'm not sure that's really one I can answer,' she explained. 'What sex is like for them, well…okay, look. The fact is, not that many of them have actually done it, right? More or less, they're as in the dark as we are. It's just that…ummmm. Look, they haven't got bad intentions, or anything, okay? Sex interests them. They want it. A lot. So they go after it – the same way they'd go after a –a – a chocolate frog.' She stared at her audience, noting the blank, confused expressions. 'This isn't making any sense, is it?''No,' they chorused honestly.

'Okay.' Ze took a deep breath, and tried to think. She sorted through conversations, through silences, through jokes and dinners and quidditch training and quickly stifled laughter - through all the myriad little interactions that make a friendship real. It was there, that overwhelming feel of – of what? What did you call it? 'Curiosity,' she said suddenly, her head snapping up. 'They're just…curious.'

'Curious?' Lily asked blankly.

'Yeah,' Ze said, getting excited about this revelation. 'They're like us, yeah? All different - different likes, different personalities – which means that they're going to have different ways of looking at things. But - just like us - they're made of the same stuff, in the same shape. Which means they're all keen on sex. So are we. You get guys like – like – Andrew Wilkins. Okay, take Andy: he's shy, he's quiet, wears his trousers up round his armpits. He's probably never talked to a girl about anything but transfiguration homework in his life – but somewhere behind those bottle-cap glasses, he's dying to get his hand up a skirt.

Now take our Rob. He's never been shy about anything a day in his life. He's got no qualms about yelling his head off in the Great Hall whilst wearing a bra, let alone asking some girl if she fancies a shag up against the nearest wall. But, in the end, Rob's no more obsessed with sex than Andy is – he just makes more noise about it. See, guys think about things a different way. You – girls, I mean – look at…uhhmmm…' Ze began to falter. This was getting into a grey area in terms of her personal knowledge, all this talk about how girls thought. 'You look at the big picture, okay?' she said. 'Like – like, if you're having tea, you don't just look down and see a cup of liquid. You see a teacup and a saucer, you see how much milk and how much sugar – you see the teapot, and if it's full enough for three people, or five. You think about how long it'll take to put the kettle on, and whether you'd rather have cakes or biscuits, and you worry what your mums would think, if they knew you were having friends round and had just put out the 'gestives instead of getting one of the smart little biscuit tins.

But boys, boys just see a cup full of liquid. That's what they wanted – tea. They've got it. They drink it. If there's biscuits, then that's nice. If there's fancy biscuits, and a little tray of sandwiches with the crusts off, and maybe some chocolates, then that's bloody brilliant. But it's all secondary to the tea. See, they look at things in essentials. The point of a quidditch match is to win. Not to show off a load of fancy moves, not to execute flawless teamwork – to win. Now, fancy moves and teamwork have their place, but they are, you might say, on a par with the sandwiches with the crusts off. Guys look at sex the same way. There are fancy moves, and everything certainly goes smoother when you're flawlessly working together, but what you're really after is the massive rush at the end. Right now, to them, that's the whole point of doing it.'

'That is the most disgustingly chauvinistic, degrading, repressive attitude –'

'No, you're missing it,' Ze hurried to interrupt before Lily could go into a full rant. 'You're missing it. Remember how I said that most of them haven't ever had sex? Yeah? So all their thoughts, all their daydreams, are just the assumptions of the uninitiated, as it were. All of them have had an orgasm – they know how nice it feels. They want to repeat the experience, as often as possible, in every way their pervy little minds can imagine. Having a girl helping things along can only make it better, but the primary interest is still the end result. They want to shag so they can come. But, since they've never actually shagged anyone, they can only concentrate on the coming part – it gets all their attention because they haven't figured out the rest of it. Not because they aren't willing to, or because they can't – just because they haven't. And, they being the sort of creatures that aren't going to put themselves to unnecessary trouble, you might have to give them a few pointers about how it's done.

See, the problem, in their minds, is that girls are not sandwiches with the crusts off, nor are we properly executed Wronski Feints. This is where it goes tits up, because suddenly they're dealing with something that they can't just master and then rely on as a constant skill. There's too much give and take – what we want, what we think, what we are comfortable doing. Suddenly they've got to look at the big picture. They've got to organise the proverbial party, and sort out how many teacups can fit on the table, and whether there are enough biscuits to go around. And they've got to talk us through worrying about what Mum'll think, and whether we should have invited the Smiths from two doors down, and what we're going to do about the hedge that hasn't been trimmed properly in ages. For a bloke, that's like getting pissed and being sent to walk through a minefield, wearing a blindfold and hobnail boots.'

Her three companions stared at her. Finally Serena opened her mouth. 'Have you ever thought about writing this down?' she asked. 'Because you could make loads of money.'

'No she couldn't,' Lily snapped impatiently. 'Because that whole explanation is just an excuse for men being insensitive bastards with the emotional capacity of a toothbrush. And I think that's still giving them too much credit. Not that you haven't been terribly clever,' she hastened to assure Ze, having realised how rude she'd sounded. 'That bit about the tea party is really quite inspired. But it doesn't tell you how to fix things.'

'That's because there's nothing to fix!' Ze cried. 'Nothing's broken, Lily, nothing's wrong. They look at it one way, and you look at it another. And that doesn't mean men as a whole versus women as a whole - some men are as soppy and warm and fuzzy as women, and some women are as brash and insensitive as men. This is just a generalisation, okay? I'm not a boy, I can't really explain what goes on in their heads – in fact, I'm fairly sure I've made them out to be worse than they actually are, but the fact is, you're never going to get anywhere if you're determined to see only the bad points. Do men get obsessed with one small part of the whole? Yes! Do women worry too much about extenuating circumstances? Yes! Have people managed to, in spite of all this, procreate to the point of populating this planet? Yes! Maybe we're engineered to fight so that we can make up later.'

'Make-up sex is supposed to be amazing,' Dorcas confirmed with a nod. 'There are all sorts of studies done on it – if you shag directly after a horrible fight, you're more likely to come to an amicable compromise.'

'Yes, but that would involve actually enjoying being shagged,' Serena said sensibly, sitting up and folding her legs.

Dorcas and Ze glanced at one another in confusion. 'But I thought –'

Serena sighed. Even Lily looked glum. 'This is what I've discovered,' Serena explained, 'and Grace could probably back me up, if she weren't such a worthless bitch. Anyway,' she tossed her hair, 'what I mean is, shagging takes practise. Loads of it. As much as you can get. We're all born with vague instincts about what goes where, but making it an enjoyable experience? Not precisely easy. I think you're right, Ze, when you say that blokes get obsessed with one point. They know where it's going, and they want to get there as quick as they can. But for us…well, it takes a bit more than a pinch here and a poke there, if you get what I'm saying.'

'Of course I get what you're saying,' Ze said, frustrated. 'But if you're not enjoying it, then tell him what he's doing wrong!'

Serena stared, gobsmacked. 'Are you joking? Tell him what he's doing wrong? You couldn't –'

'And why not?' Lily asked. 'Why not tell him he's about as much use as a wet weekend at the seaside? If he's doing a crap job, he ought to know it – and if he's not doing for you, there's no reason you should be doing for him!'

'Here here,' Dorcas nodded. 'Hardly fair. If you can't get what you want out of it, then why waste your time?'

'Look, you don't understand,' Serena was saying impatiently. 'If you tell them they're doing it wrong, they get offended and pissed off and say "what do you know"? And then they scarper and that's the last you hear from them until the rumours start. Trust me, the best you can do is give them a few subtle hints – you know, nudge their hand in the right direction, that sort of thing.'

'What,' Ze snorted, 'and hope that they eventually get the idea? Are we supposed to wait around while they have a bit of practise, and cross our fingers that they'll pick up a trick or two by accident? That's rubbish!'

'And who're they supposed to practise with, anyway?' Lily added indignantly. 'I don't want to go to bed with someone knowing that he's had another girl teach him everything he knows. Probably I'd want something different anyway. Why shouldn't I go off and figure out what I like in the find a guy and teach it to him?'

Serena blinked. 'That is bloody brilliant. This Andy Wilkins,' she said, turning to Ze, 'is he really ugly?'

'What?' Ze asked. 'But you just said –'

'I think Lily's got a point,' Dorcas said. 'You said it yourself, Ze – having the man do all the work is stupid. He's only going to do what makes him feel best anyway, so how do you know you're getting your fair share?'

'And why shouldn't we be able to figure things out ourselves?' Serena asked. 'They do. Everyone knows boys are supposed to be pervy little wankers. They're allowed to shag whomever they please, but heaven forbid I try to have a bit of fun.'

'That's exactly right,' Lily nodded. 'If girls were as openly curious about sex as boys were, no one would think it was weird that we'd be interested in a purely physical relationship. If all of us admitted that we just wanted a chance at getting some experience, not a stupid soppy boyfriend, no one would be able to talk down to us.'

'Well, I wouldn't mind a boyfriend –' Serena began.

'Well of course not, if you found one who was good at it-'

Ze sat in the centre of it all, dazed and confused, as the chat escalated to a discussion and the discussion degenerated into an argument. Lily thought men should be kept alive only long enough to harvest their sperm. Serena thought they should be genetically reprogrammed to be sensitive to a woman's needs. Dorcas said someone should teach them how to shag and do a proper set of revision notecards. Lily shouted that they were useless rubbish, the lot of them. Serena bemoaned the sad state of romance in the world. Dorcas asked if anyone had any idea if there was research to support the theory that chocolate could substitute for sex. Ze stared in horror. Sirius had thought there would be giggling?

*.*.*.*.*.

James didn't have to look up from his book to give the password, or to leap through the portrait hole. In fact, he would have made it across the common room and probably up the stairs without so much as a hitch in his pace if an hysterical voice hadn't cried, 'Head boy! It's the head boy!', nearly startling him into awareness. And then two sixth year girls had latched onto him, explaining that their dormitory was under attack by the undead.

Ordinarily, this might have caught James's attention (after all, it wasn't every day you got to meet a zombie), but tonight he really couldn't spare them the time. One large and particularly hairy girl was attempting to explain that preliminary defensive measures had been taken (for some reason, she kept attempting to show him her knuckles, which were even hairier than her face), and James nodded rapidly, his eyes never moving away from the ornate print in his book. 'Have some dungbombs,' he said absently, digging in his pocket and coming up with a handful of the horribly smelly explosives. 'Very useful things, dungbombs,' he added, shuffling them into the hairy girl's hand without looking up. 'Just, you know, chuck them at anything that moves.'

'What, even you?' a voice muttered as he broke away from them and turned to the staircase.

Somewhere in his subconscious a lesson filed under Useless Head Boy Shite raised a hesitant hand and whispered a suggestion. 'You should all be in bed,' James found himself saying, waving a hand at them over his shoulder. 'Past lights out.'

'Useless git,' another girl said, and they all crowded around Sandra Widdles and her handful of dungbombs. 'Right then, who should we get first?'

James, sadly, did not hear this. If he had, he might have saved the Ravenclaw common room carpet, not to mention the plumbing works in two toilets…but that is another story. As it was, he manoeuvred up the stairs, suffering only one stubbed toe, and leaned his way into his dormitory. Remus, Peter, and Sirius all looked up, and said in unison, 'Thank Merlin.'

'Yeah,' James replied absently, dropping his bag in the direction of his bed and missing it by about a foot. The bag tumbled to the floor, spilling books and parchment in every direction.

'You'll never believe it,' Remus said, rubbing at a persistent patch of face-black with a handkerchief. 'We've accidentally snuck into the girls' sixth again – bloody windows, moving around like that…'

'Remus got punched,' Peter added, patting his plump face dry.

'That's nice,' James nodded. 'I'm going to have a shower.' And with that he – and the book- disappeared into the bathroom.

Sirius, who had been pressing a towel of ice to his head, let the bundle drop to share in the complete and utter shock of James, a shower, and a book – all of them, together. 'This,' he said, 'can't be good.'

*.*.*.*.*.

'OI!'

Everyone froze, Lily in mid-finger shake, Dorcas striking a pose of Noble Oration, and Serena shredding a tissue violently. 'This,' Ze said desperately, 'is bloody scary. Not that I really know what's supposed to be going on, but I didn't think I was signing on for philosophical shouting matches or a Castration Campaign.' She looked around helplessly. 'I thought we were just supposed to giggle a lot and varnish our nails.'

The others glanced stiltedly at one another, discovering that they looked rather ridiculous. Dorcas sank awkwardly back onto her bed and tried to pretend that one arm, fist clenched, hadn't just been raised in a Lord Nelson-ish manner. Lily hastily tucked her hands behind her back and cleared her throat. 'This hasn't been very giggly, has it?' she asked in the tones of the humiliated.

'My nails are purple, though,' Dorcas hurriedly offered, waving her violently violet fingernails for display.

'Well who says you can't talk philosophy and apply nail varnish at the same time?' Serena asked stubbornly, tossing the remnants of her tissue over the edge of her bed. 'I personally enjoy a nice chat about metaphysics whilst I'm buffing my cuticles.' .

'Funny, really, that the guys think we're talking about which of them we'd rather shag,' Ze grinned. 'And we're really talking about how none of them would be worth the trouble!'

Lily flashed a broad, mischievous smile, morphing from righteous social crusader to cheeky minx in no time at all. 'None of them maybe, but I'm sure a man with a bit of experience, a few years to his credit…like, say, a professor?'

'Oh, we are not playing that!' Serena cried. 'We are not!'

'Ha!' Lily shouted, 'yes we are! And you have to go first! Slughorn or….Kettleburn!'

'Euuuughghghhh! That is absolutely foul,' Serena wailed. 'I choose death.'

'You can't! Got to chose – Kettleburn or Slughorn!' Lily cried madly.

Ze edged toward Dorcas, speaking out of the side of her mouth. 'What is going on?'

'I think they've both gone loony,' Dorcas whispered back, her eyes darting back and forth between Serena and Lily. 'Run for it?'

'On the count of three,' Ze agreed. 'One –'

'Oh, fine – Kettleburn – there'd be less of him to grapple with,' Serena said, capitulating at last. 'Alright, Dorcas –' Both Dorcas and Ze froze, each crouched and ready to spring in the direction of the door. 'Ummmm,' Serena was saying, doing either a fair job of channelling a spirit, or putting the hamster powering her mind through its paces on the wheel. 'Okay!' she shouted suddenly, and Dorcas and Ze jumped. 'Would you rather shag the lecturer in Ancient Runes or – wait for it – the barman in the Three Broomsticks?'

Dorcas stared at her. 'Was it something you ate? Or is this a joke?'

Serena stared back, just as confused. 'You have to choose-'

'It's a game,' Lily explained. 'You come up with two horrible choices – the nastiest ones you can can think of – and the other person has to pick which she'd rather shag. It could be, say, a Gringotts goblin versus the Slytherin quidditch captain – '

'Goblin,' Ze immediately said, instincts kicking in.

'Ohkay,' Lily chuckled. 'That's that one. You've really never played before?'

Dorcas and Ze shook their heads. 'Sirius did warn me about it,' Ze admitted. 'I figured he was joking.'

'He probably was,' Serena shrugged. 'They've no idea what we do up here. For a joke my sister told Appolonius MacGregor that we practise kissing on one another - only he believed her, and passed it on. Both of them left school five years ago, but the lads of Gryffindor still think that a hens night means we're up here snogging away, tongue and all.'

'They used to sneak up to see,' Lily said smugly. 'They'd try to come through the window, since they can't go up the stairs. We fixed it so the window moves around – if you're looking for the girls' seventh, you automatically end up somewhere else,' she added gleefully. 'Best charm I've ever cast, and I can't even tell anyone about it,' she added with a sigh.

'Oh please,' Serena sniffed, 'Flitwick already fancies your pants off. If you told him you'd managed a Locus Confundus Charm in fourth year, he'd probably throw you down on the classroom floor and have his way with you.'

'Ewwww,' they all laughed.

'Who'd you rather have,' Dorcas asked Lily, 'Flitwick or Dumbledore?'

'Eurgh,' Serena moaned, miming spewing sick.

'Tough choice,' Lily said, straight-faced. 'Very tough.' Ze spotted the gleam in her eye, and grinned. 'Flitwick wouldn't have as far to go down, but they say Dumbledore can do the most amazing things with his…wand.'

'Aghghghgh!' This started a chain of laughter, and somehow there was a great deal of throwing food, and when everyone finally stopped it was to pick sweets out of hair and crisps off pillows.

'I'd have to go with Dumbledore,' Ze admitted. 'He's getting on, but there's just something about him…'

'You know,' Dorcas murmured, 'you might be right. I can't put my finger on it, but you just get the feeling that, if you could ever get his attention…'

They all paused for a long moment to contemplate this, and then shook away the faint tingles the thoughts inspired. 'I can't believe I'm imagining sex with an over-forty,' Serena laughed.

'I can't believe I'm imagining sex with someone whose hair is longer than mine,' Lily shot back.

'Welcome to my life,' Ze mock-sighed, and everyone laughed.

'It is great hair though,' Serena said sincerely. 'I wish I had the guts to chop mine.'

'But yours is so lovely,' Ze replied enviously. 'I think I'd like long hair, but I haven't the patience to grow mine out. That, and having it short's so easy.'

'And you look good with it,' Dorcas added. 'That's not so easy, you know. Loads of other girls have cut theirs, trying to look like you, and mostly they just look like half-shaved pigs.'

'I knew there was a reason I liked you,' Serena told her. 'So quiet, and so cutting.'

Dorcas looked vaguely pleased. 'I've always wanted to be mean,' she said. 'Secretly. Not that I'd be mean to everyone, of course – but there are people that could do with a good telling off, only I can never seem to think of it when we're face to face.'

'I know what you mean – like you've got all these brilliantly clever cut-downs, but the moment you've got the opportunity to use them, all you can think of is "I hate you!" Me, I've always wanted to stand on the Gryffindor table and yell my head off – just give them all the finger and scream "bugger off" at the top of my voice,' Lily said dreamily. 'I think it would be grand. A secret fantasy, I guess. Know what I mean?'

'I'd like to run around starkers – just once,' Serena agreed wistfully. 'I think it would be, I dunno, freeing, somehow.'

'I'd like to skinny dip in the Black Lake,' Dorcas sighed. 'Course, I'd have to learn to swim first…'

Ze tried to think of any secret desires she had the involved being either murderously angry, or publicly nude, and came up short.

'Dance naked in the moonlight,' Lily said, rolling onto her back and smiling up at the ceiling. 'Just take off all my clothes and twirl round outside one night. Skyclad, like those soppy poets are always saying, in a heathen ritual. That's what my gran and my sister think I'm here learning, heathen rituals. I might as well participate in one, eh?'

'We should do it,' Serena said, sitting up. 'They've got the bloody Sacred Wanks of Godric or whatever they call themselves, and everyone knows that's just funny passwords and dressing up in smelly robes. Why shouldn't we be able to have our own little ceremony?'

'There are quite a few to choose from,' Dorcas offered. 'There are numerous rites traditionally performed by groups of witches, oftentimes in the nude, beneath the light of the moon. I've got a book somewhere –' she disappeared over the side of her bed to search up whatever ancient and arcane text contained the secret mysteries of the Daughters of Whatever.

Ze glanced at Serena and Lily, who didn't seem bothered at all. Face masques, mucky novels, and mouldy heathen rituals – and somehow it didn't feel strange in the slightest.

*.*.*.*.*

'Okay, you go in on the left – and Pete you're on the right – and I'll be coming up centre –'

'And you grab it while we hold him down,' Remus nodded, his voice barely audible. The three of them were nonchalantly gathered round the door to the toilet, trying very hard not to stare at James, whose face was buried deep in the pages of that massive book. It was nearly three in the morning, and James was seated on his bed, scribbling furiously on a tablet propped on his knees, the book balanced precariously above. He was muttering in such a rapid and garbled manner that they couldn't understand a word. Peter, Remus and Sirius watched in horror as he actually doublechecked a sentence to ensure it was the one he wanted to copy down. 'Fuck, we haven't got much time,' Remus hissed.

'He's almost gone,' Peter nodded.

'Dark forces at work,' Sirius agreed. 'On the count of three?' They all nodded and broke formation, taking up their places around the room. One Sirius signalled with his finger. Remus shook his legs out and prepared to dash. Two. Peter took a deep breath and flexed his shoulders. Three.

'Agggghh!' they all yelled, and ran for it. Before James knew what had happened, he was pinned to the bed and Sirius was above him, juggling the enormously heavy book.

'What the - fuck - you bastards - don't lose my place!' James shouted. 'DON'T LOSE MY PLACE!'

Sirius tried to keep his balance, but the mattress and James's efforts to free himself sent him into a mutated form of hopscotch. The pages of the book shuddered and blew and then, as though by order of a higher power, quite magically fell open to the very page James had been reading. 'Got it! Got it!' Sirius shouted back. 'Stop thrashing, you idiot.'

James stilled and glowered back and forth between Peter and Remus. 'What is the matter with you – can't you see I'm reading?'

Remus's eyes flew to the others. 'What d'you think – Imperius?'

'Could be a Confudus,' Sirius replied.

'Definitely Dark,' Peter nodded.

'I have not been Imperiused!' James cried indignantly.

'Ah, but you would say that, wouldn't you?' Peter said triumphantly.

Sirius crouched down and stared into James's eyes which, though snapping with fury, seemed a normal and unclouded hazel. 'What is James Potter's favourite flavour of ice cream?'

'Chocolate!'

'And what is your dog's name?'

'I haven't got a dog, which you know very well, you tosser-'

'Right, right – and if you could do anything in the world, what would it be?'

'Shag Lily Evans rotten and have her tell me she loved it!' James nearly screamed. 'Now let me up so I can rip your bloody head off you bastard –'

'Yeah, it's definitely him,' Sirius confirmed. 'But just, ahm, hold him down a bit longer, yeah?'

'Moony, Wormtail, if you don't let me go right now I am going to find the last of my dungbombs and shove them up your –'

Peter let go with a whimper. James rose off the bed with vengeance writ in every line of his body and Sirius, his stomach plummeting to his knees, yelled, 'Stop!' James froze, and turned to see Sirius, holding the book aloft like a hostage. 'Now, now just hold on a moment,' Sirius said breathlessly. 'Just hold on a moment, before you go killing anyone.'

James growled inarticulately.

'We just want to know what's going on,' Sirius explained slowly, soothingly. 'You're not being very, well, normal, and we're worried –'

'I'm just reading a book,' James snarled.

'That being our point,' Remus said. 'You only read when it's an emergency.'

'And you always tell us when it's an emergency,' Peter explained.

'And if it's an emergency,' Sirius said quietly, 'then we want to help.'

James looked between the three of them, and slowly his shoulders sank. 'That's….nice.' They all breathed a sigh of relief.

'So, what's going off then?'

James looked between them, his face slowly morphing from anger to excitement. 'Well, I wasn't going to tell you yet – haven't got all the details worked out of course – but – okay –' he whirled around and grabbed his tablet, flipping through pages furiously. 'Okay, so, this book, see, it's all about mating rituals,' he explained, as though this were perfectly normal.

'Mating…rituals?' Remus repeated, eyebrows abdicating his forehead for his hairline.

'Yeah – all sorts of kinky stuff. Honestly, you wouldn't believe some of the things they get up to. But anyway, I've been reading up on it, and I've got a plan.' He looked up, his eyes shining brilliantly.

'A plan?' Sirius repeated, sounding decidedly strangled.

'Yes! See, we've been going about it all wrong! Trying to flirt and chat girls up, like we can actually do something ourselves! Stuff like that doesn't work – there's no point to it. It's just a load of rubbish and makes us look like idiots. What we need is a tried and true ritual, something primitive, something to initiate the age-old attraction!'

As one, Remus, Peter and Sirius took a step back from the figure raising one arm in triumph, the other shaking his notes. 'Ahhhh –'

'And I've found it – took me ages, but I've found it. There are just a few details left to sort out, but if I could just finish my book,' he shot them an incensed glance, 'I could have it all worked out by tomorrow. Which, incidentally, would be the perfect time to do it! So, what do you say?' he asked eagerly.

'Tomorrow?'

'Oh, um, I think I'm busy-'

'Yeah, me too – '

'Got to, er, ahm, brush my teeth –'

'Right! And I'll be, um, counting my socks…'

James glared at all of them. 'I thought you wanted to help!'

'Yes, well, you know – '

'Look, Prongs, that's a lot to swallow,' Sirius said forthrightly. 'I mean, a ritual to – what was it – initiate the age-old attraction? Not exactly the sort of thing you think of as an emergency. Or really something you want to do on a Friday night, for that matter.'

'Couldn't you tell us what it is?' Peter asked. 'You know, whether or not it involves killing chickens or summat?'

'We are not killing chickens!' James cried indignantly. 'Or anything else,' he added, because it was just the sort of reassurance a Marauder with a conscience would need. Not that there were any of those present, of course, but there was such a thing as form. 'Look, just trust me, okay? Marauders?'

Remus and Sirius exchanged a sceptical glance: agreeing to something sight unseen was always a bad idea. They knew this. They had the scars to prove it. But if you were going to do it for anyone…well, brothers were brothers. 'Marauders,' they reluctantly agreed.

'Pete?'

'Marauders,' he said hesitantly. 'As long as there's nothing to do with chickens.'

'No chickens, I promise. Now you lot might want to get some sleep – you're going to need it.'

Still looked at one another uneasily, the other three shrugged and went to bed, wondering if life was this strange for everyone, or if it was just them….

*.*.*.*.*.

The following morning Sirius arrived in the common room five minutes late for his meeting with Ze. He was barely dressed, his shirt on back to front, his shoes unlaced, but he was there. Half seven in the morning was no time to be getting up if you hadn't gone to sleep until half three. Stifling a yawn, he tried to surreptitiously do up his shoes while glance around for his running mate. But after he'd managed to lace his second shoe and there was still no sign of Ze, he began to wonder. And then, for about half a minute, he glowered and cursed, because the room was empty – clearly, she'd left without him. And then he heard a faint sound, almost like someone murmuring, coming from the couch. Putting his head on one side, he took a step closer. What he saw had him taking another step, and then another, until he was looking down over the back of the couch.

Sirius had heard that people looked younger when they slept, as though the child inside took over the body once more. This was definitely true in Ze's case. Her short hair was mussed up against the couch pillows, her body curled round one cushion with her cheek nestled into her shoulder and her knees drawn up toward her chin. She seemed more fragile, the long slender lines of her body more obvious, the tough cording of her muscles less so. And, looking down at her, Sirius knew that he didn't have the heart to wake her. She would be angry, he was sure, probably snarky that she hadn't had enough sleep, and snarkier still that he'd been rude enough to notice it. But he couldn't do it. His eyes traced her features, the faintly flushed cheeks and the mouth that was slightly open, the breathing deep and even. Soft light poured across her face, bathing her in a golden warmth that turned her skin to velvet and her hair to pitch. Waking something so beautiful would probably count as ten or fifteen years of bad karma, he was sure of it. He wanted, more than anything, to crawl onto the couch beside her and curl around her body, to snuggle in and go back to sleep himself. But that move would probably earn him a black eye – or possibly a ruptured kidney, depending on which limb retaliated first. So, his own tiredness forgotten, he drank in the sight one last time, and tiptoed back up to his dormitory to think about something besides sleeping Ze.

*.

Ze yawned. And then she yawned again. 'Awake are we?' Sirius asked, grinning.

She turned to see him, freshly showered and obviously just dressed, standing on the foot of the boys' stair. 'Noghgo reallghghg,' she replied through yet another yawn. 'And then I got up to go jogging with you, you lazy ass, and you didn't bother to show.'

Sirius mumbled something noncommittal about sleeping in, his head ducked down. So she didn't know he'd come down and seen her…

'Not that I minded overmuch,' she said, clapping her hand over her mouth as it gaped wide again. 'Didn't get much sleep,' she explained as they exited the portrait hole and joined the mass stumble down toward breakfast.

They were silent for most of the journey, bumping shoulders and bouncing off one another as they tried to come fully awake in time to get something to eat. As they reached the Great Hall Sirius attempted to shove his tie into a semblance of a knot and glanced over at her. 'You really are dead on your feet. What kept you up? Having your cards read and your make-up done?' he joked.

'That wasn't the half of it,' she replied wryly. 'Here, you're stuffing it up,' she added, and grabbed ahold of his tie, jerking it into order and cinching it tight.

'Oofph,' Sirius gasped, tugging at the knot helplessly. 'You been practising your nooses, Executioner?'

'Just making sure you're well hung,' she shot back cheekily, sliding onto the bench and grabbing up some toast.

Sirius dropped down beside her, one corner of his mouth kicking up. 'So your night in was everything you dreamed it'd be?'

'I certainly learnt a thing or two,' she replied, spreading jam on her toast. 'You'd never think Dorcas was such a mine of useful information.'

Rob sat down in time to hear this, and, after exchanging a glance of horrified fascination with Sirius, looked down the table to where Dorcas was entering the Hall. 'Ah, this wouldn't have anything to do with bananas, would it?' Sirius asked in what he hoped were light tones.

Ze's brow furrowed for a moment, but she said, 'Yeah, she is a bit keen on them.'

Rob elbowed Sirius and gave him a hard look that said "See? Told you!". Sirius shot him one back that said "yeah, but Dorcas?"

'Of course, Serena's the real expert on – oi, pass the eggs!'

Sirius elbowed Rob, giving him frantic eyebrow signals to ask subtle and leading questions. 'Wouldn't have thought Serena'd know anything about nothing,' Rob said, displaying the keen edge of his intuition in the best possible light.

Ze scowled at him faintly 'Just because she wears heels doesn't mean she's an idiot Rob,' she admonished, popping a blueberry into her mouth and thinking of the surprising depth of Serena's knowledge of druid culture. 'I mean, it's not the sort of stuff you could be a lecturer for, but she definitely knows what she's on about.'

Rob and Sirius swallowed in sync, despite the fact that neither had taken even a bite of food.

Lily chose that moment to drop onto the bench across from her. 'Morning Zaz,' she said with a yawn. The, her gaze flickering up to the teachers' table, one eyelid drooped in what might have been a wink. 'Even in the light of day, hm?'

Ze glanced the same way – Sirius would swear they were looking at Dumbledore –and gave a decidedly naughty laugh. 'I'm still saying yes – the others'll back me up.' She leaned back in her seat and peered toward the door. 'I see Dorcas, but where's Serena?'

Lily swallowed and waved her spoon. 'I left her in the shower,' she replied.

Rob gave a gasping little groan.

'Morning,' Dorcas said, dropping down beside Lily and directly in front of the fruit platter. 'Oooh, bananas.'

Sirius pressed a finger to his temple, wondering if his head were going to explode or if this was just a system test. Leaning over to Ze he murmured, 'You're acting like aliens - what the hell happened last night?'

'Nothing,' she whispered back. 'Well, something,' she amended, almost guiltily, but Sirius had no way of knowing that she was thinking of telling off Grace. 'I had a nice time, actually. Sort of weird, when you think about it. Probably the strangest night I've ever had at Hogwarts, and it happened right in my own dormitory…'

'Your night can't have been much stranger than mine,' Sirius muttered, thinking of James's tales of secret rites and trying to ignore the way Ze was licking the jam off her fingertips.

'Oh, I don't know,' she sighed in reply, remembering the descriptions of skyclad rituals Dorcas had dug out.

'No nail varnish, though,' Sirius noted, pointing at her bare hands.

'Just on my toes,' she grinned.

Sirius found himself swallowing again, and wondering what colour she'd chosen. 'You know, I was wondering –'

'Morning Ze,' a voice said, and they both turned to see Colin Cross waving from the Hufflepuff table.

'Hey Colin,' Ze replied, smiling. Sirius stifled a snarl.

'We still on for tomorrow?' Cross called back.

'Yeah. Meet you in the courtyard in the morning?'

'Brilliant,' Cross agreed, tossing his bag over his shoulder. 'See you then!'

'Bye!' Ze turned back to the table, still smiling, and Sirius squeezed his fork in his fist.

'Well played Zaz,' Serena chuckled, sinking onto the bench. 'He's head over heels.'

Ze gave a nervous laugh, and Sirius thought, he'd bloody well better not be! 'Hopefully I'll manage not to be awkward,' Ze joked.

'You're not awkward,' Sirius began, but Serena just laughed again.

'Don't worry about it – we've promised to help you, and we will. We'll get everything settled tonight, and by the time you meet him tomorrow you'll be perfectly ready,' she said. Sirius desperately wanted to ask when Serena had got appointed as Chief Counsel, but knew Ze well enough to know that this was a question to ask her when she was alone.

'Okay,' Ze nodded, and then, as though to reassure herself, repeated, 'I'll be ready.'

Yeah, Sirius thought glumly, but I won't.

*.*.*.*.*

'If your face gets much longer they'll be using it to measure race courses,' Ze told Sirius, dropping down beside him on the couch.

He turned to look at her, trying for a sheepish smile. 'And if your smile gets much wider, it'll break your mouth,' he said, catching sight of her grin. 'You really are thrilled, aren't you?'

A faint blush infused her cheeks, and she shrugged, picking at the brocade. 'I guess I'm just surprised – I mean, I didn't really think it would happen, you know?' she explained. It was after supper and well past dark, and this was the first time she'd seen him today that didn't involve lessons and crowds of other people, and she'd been wanting all day to explain that she hadn't meant to be rude at breakfast, talking with Serena and Lily and not him. It was just that they'd had things to discuss, plans for tonight and getting Ze ready for her first ever date. She knew she was being stupid, that making a few new friends wasn't supposed to make you feel all warm and special, but there was definitely something nice about knowing that she now had mates who wore the same sort of underwear.

Sirius felt his gut twist. As far as he knew, Ze had only seen Cross in Herbology lessons and then at breakfast this morning, but if she was this happy…well, maybe she'd come across him somewhere else. While he'd been talking with Rob, maybe, or just now on her way back from supper. The idea that just talking with Cross could have her so jubilant made him want to vomit. He'd barely seen her all day, barely had a chance to talk with her at all, and he found himself thinking that it just wasn't fair. He should have woken her that morning, asked her to stay in and chat instead of go out and run. They could have had the common room to themselves for the better part of an hour.

'You're frowning again,' Ze sighed, and Sirius jumped when he discovered that her voice was so close because her head was nearly on his shoulder. 'What's the matter?'

'Nothing,' he replied automatically.

Ze opened her mouth, and then snapped it closed again. 'Okay,' she said a moment later, but the brightness in her voice now sounded forced. 'What're you up to tonight then?'

Sirius suddenly wanted to ask her for a game of chess, or cards, or even twenty questions – anything that would involve not moving off this couch for the next several hours. But he had promised Prongs… 'I'm set to meet James,' he sighed, rubbing his eyes.

'Try not to burst with excitement, will you?' she chuckled.

She was very close now, and Sirius could smell her hair. It would be lovely, he thought, to snuggle his face down in it and just mumble all his cares out. 'You don't want to know,' he said instead. 'Actually, I don't know, so I should probably say you can't know, if I'm going to tell the truth.'

'You've agreed to meet James, and you don't know what you're doing?' Now she was sitting up, her expression plainly telling him that, not only was he dumb, he was quite possibly dead – he just wasn't lying down yet. 'Have you got the words "man with a death wish" tattooed somewhere I don't know about?'

'If I say yes, will you agree to go looking for them?' his libido had asked before his brain could get back from picking out coffins.

Her eyes skimmed hotly over his torso, and he could have sworn she licked her lips. But when she looked back up she was smiling, laughing Ze, no hint of hunger in sight. 'Only if I get to take photos.'

He was just opening his mouth to form a reply when a voice – a female voice – called. 'Ze! Oi, there you are – come on! We haven't got all night.' And then Serena was there, tugging on Ze's arm and pulling her off the couch. 'Mind if I steal her, Sirius?' Serena was burbling. 'We've got a whole concept to plan, and shoes to pick out, and eyebrows to pluck – we'll be lucky to sleep at all!'

'Concept?' Ze said weakly.

'Eyebrows?' Sirius echoed.

'Nothing is happening to my eyebrows,' Ze said firmly, apparently having missed that before, having been hung up on "concept".

Serena pursed her lips and finally shrugged. 'They're nice enough as they are – you can get by. Now come on – Lily's got us some butterbeers and Dorcas is rigging up music. I've been thinking about what we should put you in…' she continued chattering, drawing Ze away.

Ze allowed herself to be pulled, but turned to grimace comically over her shoulder. 'Sorry,' she mouthed to Sirius.

He felt his lips quirking in a smile in spite of himself. 'Have fun!' he called.

'You too,' she grinned back. 'Don't do anything I wouldn't do!'

Sirius chuckled. And then Serena said, 'I've asked around, and Colin's favourite colour is green –' and the laughter died right off.

*.

'Of course it'd be raining,' Remus muttered blackly, shuffling the deck of cards that now seemed inseparable from his hands.

An hour had passed since Ze had been pulled upstairs, but Sirius hadn't left the couch. Even now he didn't bother to look up, only uttering an all-purpose grunt to acknowledge that he'd heard.

'It is letting up a bit,' Peter panted, taking a break from kicking his heels together to an inaudible Highland reel to look out the window. 'Hardly misting now.'

'It's the principle of the thing,' Remus snapped, dealing a rapid hand of solitaire across the table.

'You're sure he said we'd be outside?' Sirius asked, finally tearing his eyes away from the girl's stair and his mind from what was going on at the top of it.

'"Under the open skies" was how he put it,' Remus grumbled, sweeping two aces to the top with one deft move.

'Ready?' James asked brightly from behind them. They turned to find him, beaming widely, a rucksack on his back, his feet encased in a pair of wellies.

'No,' they chorused.

'Well come on then,' he said, positively bouncing. 'Loads to do…'

Grumbling darkly, they all stood, gathering cloaks and checking for wands. Once there was nothing else to stall with, they fell into a ragged line for the most unenthusiastic inspection in Marauder history. Remus wasn't even interested in playing drill sergeant. 'Oh, let's just get on with it,' he said impatiently without so much as a glance at their supplies. James looked faintly disappointed, but fell into the front of the line to lead them away.

'Where, exactly, are we going?' Remus asked as they clambered out of the portrait hole.

'Outside,' James replied in a low voice, nodding to the fifth year prefect, who was watching them narrowly. 'We've got,' he consulted his watch, 'quarter of an hour before they start doing rounds, so we need to get a move on.'

This, at least, they could do. No one moved more stealthily through Hogwarts Castle than a Marauder on a Mission. It didn't particularly matter that they were less than thrilled about said Mission – there were standards to keep up, and they'd be damned if they were going to lag behind. What none of the paused to consider was the fact that, at any normal time, they would have regarded the entire thing as a great adventure. Sneaking around, secret rituals – these were things they specialised in. They might not have written the book, but they had drawn the map, and they knew that no one else could compete. Tonight, however, more than the rain was dampening their spirits. There was no idle chatter, no pumping adrenaline and no sense of clandestine adventure. Rather than travelling as a cohesive whole they were making their stealthy way through the corridors as four separate entities – Remus's fingers were twitching as he played a card game against himself; Peter kept muttering a count-off, his knees bouncing up far too high for safety. Sirius and James were each lost in their own thoughts, the former glowering blackly at the end of his own nose, and the latter gleefully imagining how successful this plan was going to be.

As they slipped form the castle, using their much-practised combat rolls just because they could, there was no palpable increase in excitement. The rain had, indeed, given way to a light mist, and then stopped entirely in favour of a dense fog rolling off the lake. In silence, the four boys passed the black, still water, following James. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, leading them further and further from the school, and closer and closer to the verge of the forest. Sirius, sensing that it was either drum up some enthusiasm or face the next hour dripping wet, cleared his throat.

'So,' he said casually, navigating his way round a large rock, 'what're we out here doing. Exactly.'

James glanced over his shoulder and grinned. 'Initiating ourselves into one of the most ancient mysteries on the planet.'

'Didn't we do that back in third year?' Remus asked.

'Yeah,' Peter said glumly. 'We got chased by that bull, remember?'

A brief cloudbreak showed James's ears turning pink in the moonlight. 'Yes, well, this a bit more complicated. And important,' he hastened to add.

'Yes, but what is it?' Sirius pressed, hoping for something fantastic to take his mind off…things.

They didn't need moonlight now to see James's blush. 'A fehrhtmmign,' he mumbled.

'Sorry, didn't catch that,' Peter called up.

'A fertility ritual,' James admitted, clearing his throat and forging on ahead. He stopped a few steps later when he realised that no one was following. He turned back and asked, 'What?'

'He's lost it,' Remus mumbled hopelessly. 'Gone completely round the bend…'

Peter edged a step further away. 'Think the matron could handle him, or will we have to call in St Mungos –'

'I am not mental!' James shouted. 'I am not!'

'Oooh, very convincing rebuttal,' Sirius muttered sarcastically.

'What makes you think I've lost it – '

'We're male, James!' Remus cried. 'All of us! You can't have a fertility ritual with just blokes! And if you're planning to – well, that is not my game –'

'Alright alright,' James said impatiently. 'No one's going to be – be –' he broke off, at a loss for words. 'There isn't going to be any actual, er, fertilisation, okay? This is more of, um, well…this is sort of the ceremony that gets done before the fertility ritual. What it actually is is a rite that calls the women out to, er, play, if you will.'

The other three stared back at him in patent disbelief – and more than a little disgust. 'James,' Sirius began heavily, 'you can't honestly think –'

'Look, we're almost there, okay? Just give me half an hour,' he pleaded. 'Just half an hour, I promise…' James never pleaded. Ever. Not even with Lily Evans. Exchanging yet another glance chock full of scpticism and worry, the other three nodded. 'Thank you,' James said, blowing out a deep breath. 'Come on then – this way –'

They walked for perhaps another ten minutes, further and further from the lights of Hogwarts, and deeper and deeper into the fog. The trees got taller, older, cropping up on either side of them until they walked through something that wasn't so much a forest as a thin grove. Below them the lights of the village glowed dimly in the fog, too far away to realise into windows and streetlamps, but close enough to dispel the shivers inherent to walking on even the edge of the Forbidden Forest. When they had got nearly to the edge of the school grounds James paused at last. The other three shifted slightly, eyeing what was before them.

A spur of trees ran along the edge of the lake, nearly encircling a small grassy space, and were the mist not clouding their view, they could have seen straight down toward Hogsmeade. But standing in the way, jutting eerily out of the fog like half-fallen sentinels, were several enormous stones ranged in a loose circle, their faces blued with lichen and moss. The clouds broke for a moment over the moon and they were bathed in a flash of silver light, menacing and hulking. 'Oh god,' Remus mumbled.

'I've just remembered – homework-' Peter began, eyeing the trees fearfully and turning on his heel.

But James caught him by the collar and held him back. 'Oh no you don't – you promised. Now, listen up. I've got everything together…' he rummaged in the rucksack, which he had settled on the ground. 'Torches,' he said, holding up four cloth-wrapped sticks, probably pinched from corridor sconces. 'And vervain and acorns,' he tossed two small parcels onto the grass. 'And firewood.' He flicked his wand, and a pile of dry, heavy sticks rattled over the ground in the centre of the circle of standing stones. 'Alright, we're each going to light a torch, see, and then we'll build a fire, and say the incantation while we throw the acorns and the vervain into it, and then we dance around it, right?'

He looked up to find his three friends watching him with more than sceptical faces. 'Right?' he repeated hopefully.

There was a long silence. 'Prongs,' Sirius finally said, 'it took you three days to come up with this?'

'Well, yes –' James began, pushing his glasses up.

'Three days?' Remus repeated. 'For – for acorns and firewood?'

'Look, it's complicated –'

'And you want us to dance?' Sirius interrupted, incredulous.

'Well…'

'Prongs, this is mad.'

'Yeah,' Peter concurred. 'Completely!'

'But –'

'We are standing in the dark, in the fog, talking about dancing -'

'It's ancient magic!' James cried. 'Really, really old stuff, okay? It's the fertility dance, or mating ritual, or whatever you want to call it, but the point is, when the men dance it the women haven't got any choice – they've got to be turned on. You do it every month, to ensure that the race is preserved, because otherwise no one would ever want to have kids, yeah? They've been doing it here for thousands of years, and all that magic is built right into the rocks, and if we start it up – if we do it right - then it's got to work! That's why it took me so long, see, I had to make sure I'd got all the details, because if we do it wrong, well…'

'We'd just be dancing around a fire for no reason?' Remus suggested snidely. James glared.

Sirius, sensing that this was actually important to James – desperation, it seemed, had taken its toll – decided to intervene. 'But if we do it right,' he said, and James shot him a grateful look, 'then, well, we'll have girls all over us, right?'

'Yeah, but we can't do anything about it –' Peter started to point out, but Sirius interrupted, as this was absolutely no time for sense.

'I say we do it,' he said firmly.

Remus caught his eye, and, after a moment, sighed. 'Well, it isn't like we've got anything else to do tonight…'

'Alright,' Peter said, shooting another glance into the Black Forest. 'As long as I don't have to start the fire.'

'Excellent,' James aid, rubbing his hands together. 'Right then, get your kit off.'

'What?'

'Here now, you never said nothing about –'

'Come off it, we've seen one another naked loads of times,' James said impatiently.

'Yeah, but that's showers and stuff. Not…dancing.'

'You're sure,' Remus asked, 'that people really did this? This isn't just some joke, is it?'

'No,' James snapped. 'It's all written down – here, have a look.' And with that he pulled the book out of his bag and opened it to a marked page. 'See?' They all crowded round to look. 'It's all spelled out,' he said, his finger hovering over an illustration. 'The ancient rite of men calling to women to mate. Just like us!'

'James, they've got wings on!' Sirius shouted, pressing his nose practically to the page to make sure he was seeing right.

'They're faeries!' Peter cried, confirming his worst fears.

James's cheeks flushed. 'Yes, well –'

'You want us to do the Mating Dance of the bloody Welsh Pictsies?' Remus asked, aghast. 'We're in Scotland!'

'No, no, humans do it too! Look, we just learned it from them –'

It took several minutes of arguing, a torch so they could read the fine print, and then several promises of never-ending friendship if they would just do this one small thing. And so, at a quarter past eleven, there was a fire lit in the centre of the stone circle, and four very sheepish boys were holding lit torches, trying very hard to pretend that they weren't naked. 'At least there's no moon,' Remus mumbled.

Sirius didn't bother to point out that they were holding torches and standing around a bonfire - at this point, pretending to be invisible was as good as it got. 'So,' he said, 'what d'we do now?'

James was shuffling a handful of prompt cards. 'Okay,' he said. 'now we each take a handful of the vervain – that's the dry leaves –' Rolling their eyes, each boy took a handful of the crumbling herbs. 'And three acorns.' Dutifully, they scooped these up as well. 'Right, now I'm going to pass you what you've got to say – that's why there have to be four of us, four things to say –'

A stack of cards made the round, reaching Sirius last. 'So,' James continued, taking a deep breath. 'Remus you'll start – just read what's on your card, but try to mean it, you know, and then toss your stuff onto the fire. And then Pete, and then Sirius, and then me – and we all read and toss,' he made a few useless gestures of description. 'And then we hold hands and, er, dance.'

'Hold hands!'

'Prongs, I'm serious –'

'Oh, let's just get on with it,' Sirius groaned. 'I'm freezing my bloody bollocks off here.'

Remus shivered. 'Fine,' he snapped. 'I'm starting.' And with that, he cleared his throat. 'I –'

'Torch up,' James urged out of the corner of his mouth.

Remus shot him a glare, raised his torch up and shot James the Raised Eyebrow of Sardonic Question, to which James nodded. '"I",' Remus began again, '"the flesh and spirit of man, my feet sunk deep in soil, my arm raised up to sky" – Look, this is absolute rubbish,' he interrupted himself. 'No one in his right mind – at least, no one sober - would ever say this –'

'Just get on with it!' Sirius snarled.

'Fine. "My arm raised up to sky, I take upon my shoulders the ancient burden of –'

'D'you hear that?' This time it was Peter, and he was glancing nervously into the trees. 'Sounds like drums or something –'

'Belt up, Pete,' Remus groaned. 'Or I'll never get through this. Where was I? Oh, yeah "-ancient burden of procreation" _'

'I hear it to,' Sirius said, looking up. 'Listen –'

'The only thing I can hear,' Remus growled, 'is two stupid gits who're about to have their bollocks –' But he stopped dead when something whistled past his ear, burying itself into the earth behind him with a thunk.

'Oh piss,' Peter whispered, looking perilously close to doing just that. The sound was unmistakable now, but it wasn't drums it was –

'Hoofbeats!' James hissed.

'Centaurs!' Sirius confirmed a moment later, his eyes catching glints of light reflecting off of their flanks as they ran through the trees. It was far too dark to be counting bodies, but by the sound of it this wasn't just one or two renegades. There was a moment where the four boys froze, desperately trying to alter reality so that they weren't standing bare-arsed in the woods, clutching torches, whilst a herd of murderous man-beasts ran toward them clutching weapons. And then another arrow zoomed out of the woods, followed by what were definitely war cries, and the moment broke. 'They must've seen the fire – you know what they're like about humans!' Sirius shouted. 'Run!'

They split in four directions, cursing and snarling, running for their lives. Sirius dropped his torch immediately, and attempted to scrabble up his robes in the belief that dying naked should only happen if you went in a bed. Behind him a wild voice cried "Try to take over our wood, you bloody humans!", quickly followed by the twang of a bowstring. Sirius gave up on his clothes and pelted into the darkness. Behind him in the mist he could hear shouts and yells, but none of them sounded like his friends. The blood was pounding in his brain and he could hear hooves chasing after him, so he tore on through the darkness, ignoring rocks under his feet and branches whipping his face. His runs with Ze had given him a bit of stamina, but the fog was impossible to see through, and he blindly tumbled through the woods and then out into what felt like a meadow.

Behind him there was a crashing, followed by some very fluent curses, but Sirius didn't bother to turn. He couldn't see a bloody thing, but the same sense that had saved his distant low-browed ancestors from being devoured by saber-tooth tigers was telling that if he stopped now, he was nothing but a midnight snack. Putting on another burst of speed, he careened through the grass and collided with what felt alarmingly like a shrubbery. Cursing and thrashing, he passed through walls of scratching, prickling hedge and fell to the ground, finally rolling to a stop. For a moment he lay completely still, registering that the pounding he was hearing was of his blood in his ears, not hoofbeats chasing him. Panting heavily, he looked up to see that there were lights ahead – close ahead. And more of them were appearing. Have I got back to the castle? he thought desperately. Is everyone going to see?. And then the moon filtered from behind a cloud again, and he looked around to see hedges, and flowerbeds, and the world's most terrifying water nymph, cast out of plaster.

Oh fuck, I'm in someone's garden, which means I've run the other way, which means I'm in the village – This thought powered him to his feet in spite of myriad cuts and bruises.

Ahead of him a door creaked open, and he immediately froze, praying the moon would go back behind a cloud… 'I'm telling you, it's those blasted gnomes again,' an ancient, cracking voice called. 'Come and see if I'm right!'

Sirius attempted to edge toward a large flowering shrub, but was foiled by a low-built birdbath-cum-sundial that sent him tumbling to the ground once more. Scrabbling desperately, attempting to crawl, his foot tangled in the crystal-dangling wires atop the birdbath, he managed to get a few metres across the ground before the first voice was joined by a second.

'Muriel, you daft old bat, you're seeing things again. I'm ninety-two and can't be having with all this nonsense. What did I tell you about the cooking sherry? Come back inside this instant-'

'I've got one!' the first voice cackled. 'Look, the birdbath trap's finally worked!'

Trap? Sirius thought, desperately wrestling to get his foot out.

'I can hear it tinkling. Should be just around that rhododendron-'

He could hear movement, muffled by the fog, coming closer, and he struggled harder, but nothing was giving.

'Looks a bit big for a gnome,' the first speaker, Muriel, chortled. 'Do you see that foot, Millicent – a foot that size means his wife's a lucky woman –'

'I'll thank you not to pretend to know things you don't,' Millicent, sounding the very image of a maiden aunt, snapped. But she, too, seemed to be coming closer. 'You're an unmarried woman, Muriel Featherton, and I remember that even if you don't!'

And then, looming out of the mist like ship prows gliding on the high seas, two figures appeared before him, peering myopically into the dark. He could see dresses and hairstyles that hadn't been in style since the previous century, and two pairs of pointy-toed button-up boots that sent shivers of primordial fear shooting down his psine. The moon, devious minx that she was, chose that moment to glide from behind the sheltering clouds and beam smugly down on the garden, casting everything in sheer relief. 'Oh my,' Muriel said, her eyes clapping on him.

'That's not a gnome,' Millicent's voice boomed out.

Sirius's hands instinctively clamped over his crotch. 'There is,' he said, 'a very good explanation for this.' He looked back and forth between their expressions, between delight and horror. 'I'll, ah, I'll just let you know when I've thought it up, shall I?'


	26. Kiss and Tell

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 26: Kiss and Tell

'I'm not wearing that,' Ze said flatly.

'Oh come on, it'd look so nice,' Serena wheedled.

'No,' Ze said, crossing her arms over her chest mulishly. 'Nothing doing. I'm wearing the gray jumper and jeans and my woolly hat.'

Even Dorcas grimaced. 'It's just, well…a bit plain,' Lily lamented, staring down at the ensemble laid out on Ze's bed.

'I'm plain,' Ze shrugged, not minding at all. 'Not in a bad way,' she added when the others opened their mouths to berate her. 'I'm just…simple. I don't like fancy things, and I don't feel comfortable wearing them.' This was, she felt, an excellent way of dealing with the situation. She had discovered, over the past several hours, that while it was expected for a girl to be self-deprecating, the purpose was not to air one's fears, but to gain reassurances on one's perfection. The moment you mentioned a shortcoming, everyone immediately rushed to assure you that there was absolutely nothing wrong. All the unconditional support was very touching, Ze felt, but it made you damn wary of how you phrased things.

'Okay, that's what she's wearing,' Serena said, surprising them all by not arguing. 'Now, I'm thinking a tiny bit of powder, a kiss of blush, and some lip gloss.' Ze's eyes darted furtively about, and she licked her lips. 'You've the option of arguing out of the powder and the blush,' Serena told her, eyes glinting with steel, 'but you're wearing the lip gloss.'

Ze examined this from all angles, and nodded. 'Okay, lip gloss. I can do that. Now what're you lot wearing tomorrow?'

'My purple jersey,' Dorcas replied promptly. 'Its finally cool enough to wear it without looking stupid.' Tactfully, no one commented.

'Er, I dunno?' Lily said. 'What're we dressing up for?'

'Yeah,' Serena said. 'None of us have dates…'

'But you haven't got to wear your uniforms either,' Ze pointed out. 'Seems you like getting swanked up – might as well take the chance as not.'

Serena looked shyly at Dorcas and Lily. 'Well, if you're not busy, maybe you'd be my dates?'

'Yeah,' Dorcas beamed. 'That'd be grand.'

'We could go shopping!'

'Or eat ourselves sick in Honeydukes!'

'Or sit in the pub and get pissed and sing songs!'

'You,' Lily told Ze out of the corner of her mouth, 'are a genius.'

'Nah,' Ze shrugged. 'I just don't want to be the only one wearing nice clothes.' Lily eyed the outfit Ze was proposing to wear, and arched a brow. 'I know, I know,' Ze sighed. 'But they're fancy for me.'

'You're different than I thought you'd be,' Lily said quietly as Dorcas and Serena stared rowing about Madame Puddifoot's. 'I just, I guess I expected you to be all…blokey, but really, you're just like us.'

A small warm glow infused Ze's cheeks. 'This is going to sound really weird,' she said, unable to meet Lily's eyes. 'But I'm sort of, um, glad that…you know, we've…got to be friends. I mean, we have, haven't we?' she asked nervously.

'Yeah,' Lily nodded. 'Yeah, I think we have. Weird, isn't it?'

'Definitely,' Ze said, feeling unaccountably relieved. 'Definitely weird. I never thought I'd get to like you lot – or even get to know you, really. And here we all are, rowing about clothes.'

'I feel really stupid for never trying to make friends before. I used to worry that maybe you were a spy for Potter – like he'd threaten you with your place on the quidditch side if you didn't tell him things about me,' Lily said sheepishly. 'Then I realised what an idiot I am, making the whole thing about me.'

'James is desperate,' Ze grinned, 'but even he has limits. He's not so bad, you know,' she added, thinking that if Lily had brought up the subject herself, the least she could do was use the opening.

Lily snorted. 'No offense, but he's not in love with you, is he? I'm sure he's not as horrible as I make him out to be,' she added after a moment, 'and there are moments when – well, when I think I could possibly tolerate him. And then he does something completely wankerish, and I lose my temper, and there we are, back where we started.'

Ze nodded, suppressing a smile. 'Fair enough,' she said lightly.

'And anyway, he's rude to other people, and he's completely arrogant, and he never combs his hair,' Lily continued, savaging a pair of thick wool socks onto her feet. 'How could he ever possibly think I'd fancy someone like that?'

'Dunno,' Ze managed, barely keeping her twitching lips in check.

'If he'd make a bit more effort I'm sure he'd find someone willing to put up with him,' Lily sniffed. 'But enough about Potter – what's your plan for your date?'

'Er, plan?' Ze repeated, completely thrown off her amusement.

'Yeah, what are you going to do?'

'Well, I've got to stop at the –'

'No, I mean, what are you going to do if something goes wrong?'

'Wrong?' Ze repeated hoarsely. How had she never noticed all of these pitfalls? 'What would go wrong –'

'Oh, anything,' Lily said, turning away from her wardrobe with an armful of potential Hogsmeade ensembles and dropping them onto her bed. 'You know, if he stands you up, or wants to go somewhere you don't, or if he meets up with his friends and starts ignoring you, or puts his hands somewhere you don't want them –'

'I'd, ahm, I'd just tell him? Except for the hands bit – then I'd give him a right thump,' Ze said positively.

'Telling him won't do any good,' Lily said, shaking her head and unfolding a blouse. 'Anyway, you'll want to do it properly. Like, if he says "oh, let's sit down here with my mates" you know you're going to be stuck talking with them for hours and being utterly bored. So you say "oh – you go on – I see someone I need to talk to" and make sure it's another boy, and he'll be back with you straight off.'

Ze mulled this over. 'So basically I manipulate him?'

Lily frowned. 'Er…yeah. Look, it's the only useful thing Grace ever taught me, and it really does work. The thing about males is they don't want it if it's easy to get, yeah? Well…competition drives them mad. And anyway, it's just good sense to have a contingency plan. Serena, Dorcas and I could meet you in the pub – you know, if it goes badly, you could say that you'd promised to meet us, and if it's going well you could just do a no-show, right?'

Again, Ze thought about this. It was, in all probability, good sense. But she knew she wasn't going to do it. It was one thing to know that they were out there, if you needed them, and quite another to use them as an excuse when you were having a bad time. Frankly, she'd rather just tell Colin "thanks, but this isn't my cup of tea" than lie and say she had promised someone else to meet up. 'Um, that's really nice of you, but, you know, you might want to do something else…'

Lily eyed her, and then nodded. 'Right, well, we'll be around if you need us.'

Ze breathed a sigh of relief. 'Thanks.'

'Has anyone seen my handbag?' Serena asked from the doorway, her hands on her hips.

'Um…no?'

'Piss – it must be in the common room. Hopefully no one's nicked it – I'll just pop down –' and with that, she dashed out of the room.

'Right,' Dorcas said, turning from her wardrobe. 'Serena says not, but I think it's perfect.'

Lily and Ze stared at the woolly, appliquéd sweater with the massive turtleneck ruff, and leaned away in unison. Suddenly they wished they'd left their handbags in the common room, too.

*.

Remus, cursing James Potter, centaurs, rocks, and pointy sticks just below waist height, limped toward the Fat Lady and prayed that no one was in the common room. He was wearing the remnants of a flag he had snatched off a suit of armour while it was busy clapping its visor down to avoid the view. It wasn't much in the way of a garment, and he was feeling a decided draft. In fact, the entire thing seemed to be held together by three fickle threads, and he was coming perilously close to having to go bare-arsed in favour of covering the family jewels.

'Great Morgana and Circe!' the Fat Lady screeched. 'You're indecent!'

'No,' Remus said through clenched teeth, 'I'm naked. Unmitigated Midges!' he snarled.

'Never in my time – you lot get cheekier by the year – values going right down the toilet –' The Fat Lady's indignant rant was drawing the subjects of other paintings, and Remus could feel the rear panel of his makeshift loincloth giving way.

'Unmitigated Midges!' he shouted. 'That's the password – open up you stupid cow!'

'Why you cheeky little sod –' she squawked, but the magic had taken hold and she was swinging open.

Muttering under his breath, Remus dove through the hole, leaving the rear scrap of the flag of some forgotten fiefdom to waft to the corridor floor, borne down by the weight of the Fat Lady's rebukes. The common room was, thankfully, quite dark, and Remus clutched the remaining scrap of fabric over his dangly bits while his eyes feverishly searched the room. No one – brilliant. Deciding on speed over stealth, he positively leapt across the room toward the stairs. And he was almost there, too, when the most horrible sound in the world stopped him dead.

Giggling.

He couldn't help it – some things are just instinctive, and the sound of a girl laughing at him had his body turning round of its own accord. 'Evening Remus,' a voice chuckled richly, and his ears began to burn.

'H-hi Serena,' he managed, now turned to face her, wishing he had at least a sofa cushion – anything bigger than the minuscule square of faded blue silk. 'How's – how's it going?' he asked, trying vainly to sound unconcerned.

Serena didn't even bother to hide her smile. Tilting her head to the side, she ran her eyes down and then back up, her grin spreading wider and wider. 'It's just got quite a bit better,' she said, rocking back onto her heels.

Remus was now perilously close to exploding from heated humiliation. She was standing there, laughing at him. Just laughing. 'I'm – I just – ah, would you mind turning around?'

Serena leant one hip against the back of the couch and crossed her arms. 'Yeah,' she said gleefully. 'I would. You go on upstairs – I'll make just make sure you get back to your room safely.'

The unhindered glee in her voice sparked his anger. Fuck it, he thought. She wants a show? We'll give her a show – and we'll see who's laughing at the end. Affecting nonchalance he definitely didn't feel, Remus shrugged, dropping his hands and balling the bit of flag up in his fist. 'Always nice to know chivalry's not dead,' he said with a wink. 'Night then,' he added, and, giving a theatrical and completely superfluous stretch, he turned on his heel and whistled his way up the stairs.

Her gobsmacked face stayed with him, and as he pushed open the door to his dormitory, he could have sworn he'd heard her sigh…

*.*.*.*.*'Lipgloss?'

'Check.'

'Wand?'

'Check.'

'Extra toilet tissue?'

'Lily, I really don't think –' Ze began.

'Trust me,' Lily said firmly. 'Always be prepared.'

'Check,' Ze sighed. 'But really, shouldn't we be doing this in the morning? When I'm actually about to leave?'

'Oh, we'll do it then, too,' Lily said blithely.

'You're scary.'

'No, I'm smart. You alright, Serena?' Worry had infused her voice as she spoke the last, and Ze looked up to see a very dazed Serena wobbling through the door.

'Did you hit your head?' Dorcas asked, stepping forward.

Serena let out a faintly hysterical giggle, and clapped a hand over her mouth. There wasn't a handbag in sight. The other three exchanged a long and telling glance. 'Er, what happened?' Ze asked tentatively.

Serena surprised them all by smiling dreamily. 'I am officially going to bed, while this is still the most amazing day of my life,' she announced, and fell backward onto her four-poster.

There was a long silence, and she gave a faint sigh that ended in a snore. 'Weird,' Dorcas breathed.

*.*.*'You are dead - dead, d'you hear me –'

'Welcome back, Sirius, glad to see you're alive,' James said, grimacing as he tried to sit up.

'I am not joking, James, I'm going to rip your bloody head off and – '

'Looking a bit worse for wear, but then you did go sprinting off into the trees, didn't you?' Remus asked, stepping out of the toilet and limping across the room. Sirius gaped back and forth between them. 'We almost died. Died,' he repeated emphatically when the first mention didn't arouse the proper respect. 'And you lot left me. Have you got any idea where I ended up? In the castle? No. In the lake? No. Did you come looking for me? NO! You left me to the mercy of the bloody Mad Aunts! I ended up in their garden, okay? Chained to a birdbath! Naked!'

'And you've lived to tell the tale,' James said, but Sirius missed the sarcasm.

'D'you know what they said when they found me? D'you know?'

'I bet you're going to tell us,' Remus muttered.

'She said my wee winky was taking a chill! My wee winkie! They're completely deranged! They looked like they wanted to take me inside the house to eat me – and I don't mean anything to do with putting me in the oven first! I've barely escaped. I'm lucky to have my life! If it weren't for the fact that I managed my transformation and did a bunk while they were still confused, I'd very likely be a – a love slave!'

'You poor thing,' James mumbled. 'It must've been so hard, escaping as a dog and running back to where you'd left your clothes so you could get dressed before you got back here. Must have been bloody awful, sneaking through as a lovable old mutt people just love to pet. Not nearly as easy as almost being shot with that massive crossbow of Hagrid's. Really, it must have been loads worse than thinking you're going to end up as venison steak. Not to mention how awful it is compared to getting locked out and having to climb a wall starkers, or nearly plowing into McGonagall in the corridors, or having Peeves throw water balloons at you. Gosh, I just feel terrible.'

Sirius, his chest still heaving furiously, didn't hear a word. He was too enraged to listen, and his eyes couldn't keep still, skipping about the room. 'Where's Pete?'

'Cornered,' Remus groaned, easing his battered body onto his bed by painful degrees. 'We found him on the Map – he's holed up in a broom cupboard in the Charms corridor, waiting for the Ghost Convocation to break up.'

'Nasty,' Sirius muttered. 'But then, what else could we expect? After all, we did insist on following you out there and taking our clothes off and –'

'I'm sorry, okay?' James exploded. 'I'm sorry! I fucked up utterly, and it's got us all into trouble and I'm sorry. There – you happy now?' he finished on a snarl, thumping a book up in front of his face.

Sirius, who had been seconds away from forgiving the situation entirely anyway, nervously eyed the book. 'He still on about reading?' he asked Remus nervously.

'Yeah,' Remus sighed. 'But I checked it – this time, he's onto root vegetables.'

'Thank bloody Merlin,' Sirius breathed, and went to have a long, hot soak.

*.*.*.*

Ze stalled her way across the common room the next morning, her eyes on the boys' staircase. When she finally saw a very ragged Sirius shuffling his way down, she gave a half-wave and caught his eye. He winced, and, to her amusement, limped over to her. 'Told you following James blind wouldn't lead anywhere good,' she grinned as he shambled to a stop.

He glowered at her, his shoulders hunched. 'I'm not going to dignify that with an answer.' His eyes skimmed over her, and lightened slightly. 'You look nice.'

She blushed. 'Thanks. Serena says its too plain, but I'm comfortable, so –'

'You look nice,' he repeated, meeting her eyes and cutting her off.

'Oh,' she said, flustered. 'Okay, um, well…thanks.'

'You going down to breakfast? Oh no,' he immediately said, realising the time. 'You've already been and come back to get dressed – silly me. So you're on your way,' he said, and his smile seemed quite a bit thinner.

'Yeah,' she said. 'Yeah, ah, I just wanted to see…to see what you were…doing. Today, I mean,' she clarified, clearing her throat nervously.

He shrugged and then winced when his shoulders twinged. 'Dunno, really. Not much in the mood for the village, but I'll probably go down anyhow. Remus needs…something.'

'Oh,' she nodded, and the silence stretched. 'Well, um, maybe I'll see you? You know, there…or…something…'

She's nervous, he realised. She's nervous, and if something goes wrong, she wants to know where I'll be. 'In the pub,' he said suddenly, knowing that he'd sit there all bloody day if he had to. 'I'll be in the pub.'

'The pub. Okay,' she smiled nervously. 'Right, well, I'd best be going then –'

'Yeah. Good luck.'

'You not walking down?'

He shook his head. 'Waiting on the others,' he explained, jerking his shoulder back toward his dormitory.

'Right. Then I'll…see you.'

'See you,' he agreed. She nodded again, and with a slight wave headed for the portrait hole. On the girls' stair someone giggled, and Sirius turned his head to see, not an obnoxious group of first years, but Lily, Serena, and Dorcas. All three of them were grinning broadly, and when they saw they'd caught his eye, Lily gave a slight wave. Feeling unaccountably awkward, Sirius waved back, and then turned to head back up the stairs. There was no point in waiting down here – especially not with Dorcas in that jumper.

*.

Last night, Ze had dreamed that she'd gone to the courtyard only to discover that Colin wasn't there. She's stood, waiting, while around her everyone in the whole school – even the first years, even Slughorn, even Filch - had met up with someone and gone down to the village. Finally it had been her, completely alone, in the middle of the space with only the fountains for company. Dark had slowly fallen, but she had just stayed, sitting, waiting….

When she rounded the corner now to see Colin, looking sharpish and positively clean, standing there waiting, she had a quite gratifying surge of relief. 'Morning,' she said when she got close enough to hear, hoping she didn't sound as nervous as she felt.

'Hi,' he said, smiling as he turned. 'You look nice.'

It was exactly what Sirius had said, but somehow Colin's voice lacked the definite force he'd given the statement. 'Thanks.'

'So,' he continued, tilting his head toward the gates. 'No carriages – fancy a walk?'

'Sure.' When do we get past the awkward bit?

'Brilliant – come on, you said you needed to stop in at the quidditch shop. I wouldn't mind having a look over the beaters' bats, one of ours is about to go…'

Slowly, Ze relaxed. Colin kept up a steady stream of chatter about sport and nonsense that didn't require much thought on her part, and gradually her answers grew longer than a single word. They walked side by side, hands gesturing as they talked, periodically greeting friends and acquaintances. Colin did a lot more of this than Ze did, and she could feel the speculative glances following them. Colin Cross and Ze Meridian, she could imagine them whispering. Who'll she have a go at next? And then she actually heard a girl say, "probably he only asked her because she's guaranteed, isn't she?". Her friend had laughed at this, and Ze felt her own shoulders stiffening. Colin, thankfully, didn't seem to notice.

'Here we are then,' he beamed, opening the door to the shop and motioning her inside.

'Thanks.'

'Back already?' Eustace, the sales wizard, asked, smiling at Ze.

'It didn't quite fit,' Ze admitted, holding up the bag and removing the protective guard. 'I think I need the next one down.'

'Right, we'll just get that changed out then –' he bustled over to the display and removed the proper package. 'Go ahead and try it on,' he urged, removing it from the packaging. 'Wear it around a bit if you like – they're sized for men, o'course, so I can see how a good fit might be hard to find…'

'Cheers,' Ze grinned, accepting the guard and fastening it on, flexing her arm this way and that. 'Oh – and this is Colin – he's in for a new beater's bat,' she explained.

'Right you are,' Eustace nodded. 'We've just got some new stock in – very nice, solid oak –' pitching for all he was worth, Eustace led Colin over to the display of short cudgels, asking, 'Which hand do you favour, then?'

'Oh, it isn't for me,' Colin was quick to explain. 'I'm the keeper, see, but one of our lads is desperate for a new bat, only the village is out of bounds for him at the moment,' he grinned. 'Long story, but the point is he asked me to have a look around as he knew I was stopping by.'

He remembered, Ze thought, faintly flattered. He remembered I said I needed to come here, and he told his friends… There was no doubt about it – Colin Cross was a top bloke.

She watched as he questioned Eustace about the merits of each bat, explained the Hufflepuff beater's needs, calling over, 'Cover your ears – this is top secret stuff!' when it came to describing specific play requirements. Smiling slightly, she turned to look at aerodynamically fit robes and training gear, and when they left the shop a half hour later she was carrying the properly-sized arm guard, and he had a new solid ash bat. Eustace waved after them happily, and then went off to dust the quaffles.

'Where to next?' Colin asked, taking Ze's bag from her without asking.

Ze frowned slightly: chivalry was grand, but she wasn't keen on being treated like a wilting violet. 'Your choice,' she told him with a shrug.

'Honeyduke's?'

'Sure,' she agreed. 'I don't mind carrying that,' she added, pointing to her shopping back.

'I've got it,' he replied with a slightly crooked smile. 'I'll let you take over when it gets too heavy.'

'Right then,' she murmured, deciding that there was no point in pushing it. They turned in the direction of Honeyduke's and she wracked her brains for something to say. 'Er, have you heard they've developed a new sort of Tumbling Toffee?' As soon as the words were out, she winced: it might be possible that dumber things had been said on dates, but the chances were appallingly slim.

Colin, however, didn't seem to agree. 'Really?' he asked eagerly. 'That's the stuff that has you doing backflips, yeah? And they've done it over?' When she nodded warily, he beamed. 'Wicked'

And on they went.

*.*.*.*

'Have you got any more?' Remus asked, and the young shop attendant gave him a very strange look.

'Er, you've already got thirteen packages…' she pointed out.

'Yes, but I was rather hoping you've have that new deck that makes it bloody impossible to win,' Remus explained tightly.

'But you said you would be using them to play solitaire…'

'Of course,' he snapped impatiently.

'Ouch!' James cried from the other side of a display. And then: 'I'm okay – it only got my ear!'

'Is he, um, supervised?' the young witch asked.

'Yeah, the short one's his caretaker,' Sirius improvised, leaning against the counter beside Remus. 'And he's had his medicine, so you've nothing to worry about. Come on, Moons, we can come back next week if you've worn all these out.'

'Yes, but-' Remus began feverishly, only to be interrupted by another yelp from James.

'Come on,' Sirius muttered, beginning to feel a bit impatient: in addition to the possibility of James loosing an extremity, they were wasting valuable time that could be spent waiting on Ze.

'Fine,' Remus snarled, sweeping the cards across the counter. 'I'll take the lot.'

'Right,' the shop attendant said, jerking nervously as James cried "will you look at this!", followed by a nasty snapping noise.

'Get him out of here,' Remus pleaded, watching as his precious cards were loaded into a bag.

'Done,' Sirius agreed, rounding the display to grab James by the scruff of the neck. 'Come on then – Pete, let it go.'

'Tell it to let go of me!' Peter begged. Herding the both of them whilst disentangling Peter from the Wonder-weave Spiderweb was no easy feat, but Sirius managed, getting them both out into the street. Remus emerged from Dervish and Banges a moment later, and they all glanced around.

'Where should we –'

'Zonko's –'

'No,' Sirius interrupted. 'The pub.'

'But…'

'Not even lunchtime –'

'We just ate –'

'Pub,' Sirius repeated, immovable.

'Ohkay,' James said. Brightening, he added, 'I can always get on with my reading.'

'Mm,' Sirius nodded, marching down the street toward the Three Broomsticks.'

'And I've just got new cards,' Remus said, eyeing his bag hungrily.

'Ooh – and they've got a lovely open floor,' Peter beamed. 'I really need to work out my step-kick.'

Sirius nodded mutely. He didn't care what they did. He just needed to be there.

*.*.*.

Ze was having a fairly nice time. So far she'd been taken round Honeyduke's, Zonko's, and to lunch at the little café at the end of the high street. She'd paid for her own sweets and ice mice, but Colin had refused to go halves on lunch. There hadn't been any more awkward pauses after Honeydukes, and if she could ignore the way he kept putting his hand on the small of her back to guide her, she could almost pretend they were just two friends spending a day together. It was almost half past three in the afternoon now, and she was beginning to wish they were just friends spending a day together, because then she could have said "Right, I'm done – let's go back, shall we?" without having to worry about offending him.

But Colin wasn't quite ready to go. He'd mentioned wanting to stop in at Dervish and Banges, but they weren't precisely hurrying up the street. Ze had discovered that she rather wished they were. It wasn't that she didn't think he was nice and enjoyable company and all, but…he didn't get her jokes. Feeling slightly resigned, Ze hefted her bag – she'd reclaimed it at lunch, and he wisely hadn't argued. 'You still want to stop in at –'

'Wow, it looks really nice, doesn't it?' he interrupted, and she glanced over to see that he'd stopped beside a small gated garden. 'I wonder who keeps it up?'

Ze, slightly curious herself, joined him at the gate. 'Probably everyone, together,' she replied, pointing to a small plaque affixed to the ironwork. 'See – "In Loving Memory of Elphaba Jennings – May Your Garden Always Grow". You see them, in smaller villages, places where someone's planted loads of flowers and a hundred years later everyone's still keeping it up.'

'Come on,' he said, opening the gate and gesturing her in.

Smiling faintly – it was pretty, with the autumn leaves turning and everything just beginning to fade – she followed. 'I've always liked autumn best,' she admitted. 'There's something about watching the frost eat things up.'

There was a narrow path running through the trees and shrubs, leading the centre of the small plot, where a fountain tinkled in the sudden quiet. 'Its almost like the rest of the village doesn't exist,' Colin's voice came. 'And look – the garden seems to go on a lot further than the space…'

Ze, turning in a circle, smiled wider. 'It is a magic village,' she reminded him. 'They wouldn't have to worry about Muggles wandering in, would they? Why not have a massive garden in a tiny spot?'

'Why not indeed?' Colin murmured, and she realised that he was right behind her.

She turned a touch jerkily, almost stumbling over her own feet, and he grinned, his dimples popping up as he reached out a hand to steady her. He didn't say anything, and a thought darted through her head too fast to properly analyse: he's going to kiss me.

It didn't happen like she thought it would. In films, there was always a sort of graceful, preplanned joining of lips. And both people seemed to be really excited about it. Ze had about a half second to register that one or the other of them was going to have to shift to avoid a nose-on collision. And it didn't look like it was going to be Colin. There was no time to decide whether or not she wanted it – she barely managed to tilt her head to the side before his hand was cupping her cheek and his mouth was pressing against hers. It was almost gentle, at first, just warm lips and the faintly roughened skin of his palm against her cheek. Her eyes, open wide in surprise, shut when she reaslised that she was staring at his eyelids – not the best view, when you're centimetres away. He moved his head slightly, and she decided that this wasn't so bad – a little boring, but not so bad. And then it got wet. Not warm, soft wet, but chilly, clammy wet. And there was a rather distinct…taste. His hand left her face, and abruptly she was leaning toward nothing but empty air.

Her eyes flew open and she stared, lips puckered, at nothing. Really, nothing. Not Colin's-taken-a-step-back-and-is-wiping-his-face nothing, but You're-completely-alone-nothing. Just empty garden, the fountain splashing serenely and the wind rustling faintly through the trees, stirring a few golden leaves loose to drift towards the ground. Turning hesitantly around, she strained her eyes. 'Um, Colin?'

There was no possible way he'd gone – in addition to the fact that she would have heard him, he couldn't have gotten that far in what was, she judged, to be perhaps five seconds. But where the bloody hell had he got to? 'Colin? If this's a joke, it isn't bloody funny –' she broke off, realisation that it might indeed be a joke warming her face as she thought about how humiliating that would be. 'Colin?' she tried one more time, her voice catching a bit at the end. And then there was a rustle, so faint at first she couldn't tell where it was coming from. It grew stronger after a moment, and she discovered that the leaves at her feet were brushing against one another. Then something pushed its head up out of the pile, and a pair of large amber eyes blinked at her.

'Ribbit?' said Colin Cross.

A/N - right, so I know that I already posted this chapter, but realised that revision was essential as I'm not going to be able to save enough of the original version to include some of the secondary plotlines. If you're reading this for the second time, please forgive that the vignette involving Peter and Grace will not appear - to be perfectly honest, the entire text of the story has been completely scrambled, and this chapter was once around 8,000 words - this is all that remains, and I'm sorry, because it's absolute crap. Once I get things back together I may return and try to recreate bits, but all the pertinent facts are included in this version, and for the sake of moving the story on I'm just going to go with it for now.

thanks for all the lovely reviews - they make writing worth it! oh, and Colin is a frog, not a rabbit - apologies for those who thought there was a spelling mistake.

More to follow soon - I promise all will be explained!


	27. Save the Date

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 27: Save the Date

Ze didn't know why she was surprised. Really, it had been coming – for ages. All you had to do was look at Gran Meridian to know that the family standard for mental health wasn't set over-high. Ze was probably lucky it hadn't struck sooner. Like, say, while she was having breakfast. This humiliation was nothing in comparison to, well, to leaping up and strutting around the Great Hall, pretending to be a chicken. And anyway, if you had to go mad, wasn't it better to start thinking it was other people that had turned into animals?

'Ribbit! Rhi-rhi-rhibit!'

Ah, yes, she nodded, looking down. Yes, it really did look like there was a frog squatting at her feet. Quite a fine, large frog, with a curious pattern of yellow and black splotches ringing what, in a slimmer, shapelier beast, might have been called a neck. Oddly enough, it looked a bit like the Hufflepuff scarf Colin had been wearing… And come to think about it, there was a certain, well, smiling expression about that wide, almost rubbery mouth that seemed vaguely Colin-esque. That would, of course, be her brain, churning out chemicals in a completely unbalanced fashion, having a go at her. But HA! The joke was on it, because wasn't that stupid! She knew - knew – better –

Knew better. Knew better. Didn't you need a brain to know things? Ze wasn't positively positive on this, but she thought that she might just be getting close to the truth…which was, of course, that if her brain was taking the piss, and she knew it was taking the piss then it wasn't…really…taking…

'Oh fuck,' Ze whispered. 'Oh fuck.'

'Mibbit,' the frog said.

The breath exploded from Ze's lungs, and her knees dropped out from beneath her without so much as a by-your-leave. Directly in front of her the frog hunched in the leaves, enormous amber eyes not showing the faintest spark of sentience. 'Colin?' she choked out, the word strangling in her throat. 'Colin?' she repeated feverishly. And suddenly her hands were flurrying into motion, brushing the leaves away, dancing around without actually touching the frog, and Ze found herself bent forward almost onto the ground, her eyes – wide and hopeful - even with the frog's. 'Colin, is that you? Look, if it is – just – I dunno – just, erm, say something, right? I mean, it has to be you,' she continued frantically. ''Cos you were wearing your scarf and now the frog – um – you – um – just say something, okay? Anything!'

'Ib-ib-iiiiiibhhhh,' the frog replied, and its long purplish tongue lashed out to snare an innocently passing fly.

Horrified, Ze watched as the gaping maw snapped shut and the flesh shimmied in what passed for frog mastication. 'I was…I was hoping for something a little more definite than that,' she whispered. 'I mean, we did just have lunch – I don't see how you could possibly be hungry –'

Abruptly it occurred to her that she was kneeling on the ground, on the afternoon of her first date, talking bollocks to a frog that might or might not be the boy she'd just kissed. Desperation and horror welling deep within her and rushing rapidly up, she realised that, not only did she have no idea if the frog was Colin, she had no idea how he'd got that way. Or, more importantly, how to get him back.

*.*.*

'Did you know that rutabagas can be made into a pie?'

Sirius glanced away from the window to stare at James. 'What?'

'Rutabagas,' James repeated. 'They're supposedly delicious and quite nutritious.'

'You need help,' Remus said without looking up from the cards spread across the table.

'At least I've got more romantic options than the queen of hearts,' James shot back.

'Please,' Remus sneered. 'You're mad for a girl who can't stand the sight of you and you're obsessed with bloody legumes.'

'The rutabaga is a vegetable,' James sniffed. 'And Lily doesn't mind the sight of me –'

Sirius, who had been watching the argument rather like it was a tennis match, took another mouthful of lager and turned just in time to see Peter accomplish a surprisingly graceful kick-spin-leap combination that propelled him right over a chair and into the bar. Madame Rosmerta let out a screech of rage as a tower of freshly scrubbed glasses tumbled over. Peter, who up until the collision had been bouncing about with impressive verve, instinctively curled into a ball as the furious barmaid bore down on him, shouting death threats.

Ordinarily this would have been vastly entertaining; at the moment, Sirius could barely summon a smile. In fact, he could barely summon up any interest. His mind was simply too full of Ze. Where was she? What was she doing? Was she having a nice time? Was she laughing with Cross? Flirting with Cross? Or would she see that he was a total and complete tosser, unworthy of her time or affection –

You, my friend, are inordinately jealous, his subconscious informed him wryly. I am not! Sirius shot back, thumping his glass down on the table. I – I – I'm concerned! That's right – concerned! He pondered this for a moment, and decided that concerned would do well enough. After all, he couldn't be jealous of Ze because he didn't want to date Colin Cross, and he couldn't be jealous of Cross because he didn't want to date Ze. He just wanted to make sure that she was completely happy for every moment of every day of the rest of her life. Anything less just wasn't acceptable. Bloody hell, you've got it bad, his subconscious sighed resignedly.

'Mmm,' Sirius agreed, watching dispassionately as Madame Rosmerta flogged Peter soundly with a wet rag. Was it possible that Ze would actually enjoy her day with Cross? No – surely not. That would be completely impossible, given what an insufferable git Cross was, and Ze had far too much sense to be going out with insufferable gits. You sound like a broken record, he informed himself. Either do something to run Cross off, or quit whinging.

Thankfully, Sirius was prevented from having yet another epiphany by none other than Peter. 'Help!' the plump boy mewled, squashing his limbs into an ever-tighter ball in an attempt to escape Madame Rosmerta, who had grabbed up a broom and was jabbing him in the side. Sirius wasn't sure if this new technique was designed to roll Pete off of something important, or if the barmaid was simply far more sadistic than anyone had previously surmised.

'Ooch – ye'll have squashed it flat by now!' she shouted, abandoning her broomstick after a good half minute of poking with no visible results. Sirius decided that this meant Pete was lying on top of something – presumably something squashable – and that they were all in for a good show.

But when Rosemerta started going for Peter's head and ears with the water-weighted bar cloth, Sirius sighed and stood up, leaving James and Remus exchanging insults that had an alarming amount to do with common vegetables. 'Now Rosie,' he began as he neared Peter's whimpering, foetal-folded form.

'Don't you "Rosie" me, Sirius Black!' Rosmerta snarled, not stopping her assault. 'I've had enough, you hear!' Enough of the kicking!' Snap! went the towel against Peter's face. 'And the jumping!' Snap! 'And the bloody bagpipes! I am through!'

'Heeeelp,' Peter pleaded from between his arms, which were wrapped protectively over his head.

'Knocking down my glasses – it isn't you that's got to do the washing up, is it, you little –'

Charm, Sirius, charm, he reminded himself. 'You've got to admit it is a bit funny –' he began, summoning what he hoped was a cheeky smile.

Rosemerta looked up and caught sight of the faintly crooked grin and the hopeful grey eyes, her own face freezing in a rather unflattering expression. But the reprieve was only momentary 'Funny?' she snarled, her head whipping back down with a viper's speed as she bent forward and grabbed a-hold of Peter's kicking legs, trying to drag him towards the door.

'Well you know,' Sirius continued, trying to pull the thrashing figures apart. 'The bagpipes are murder, but watching him leap…' At this, Rosmerta paused, her foot poised right by Peter's ribs, ready to deliver a vicious, sequin-shod kick. But she was hesitating, and Sirius realised that her eyes were focussed on his mouth. Just keep talking, he told himself, trying not to be distracted by Peter's fearful whimpering. Just a few more minutes and she'll be all calmed down…

…And then he lost all train of what was going on. His head snapped around to stare through the window, and it took him a moment to realise why: on the other side of the glass stood Ze, rapping frantically against the pane to get his attention. The moment he saw her face Sirius' feet were moving of their own accord. 'Sorry Pete,' he said. 'I've got to go.'

*.*.*

Ze wasn't imagining a white charger or shining armour as Sirius burst through the pub doors. Even if she'd been in a condition to notice the fine detail, she'd have been happier with his jacket and slightly tatty jeans anyway. But, instead of picturing a knight riding to her rescue, Ze was envisioning the look on McGonagall's face when she tried to explain to the deputy headmistress that she currently had - in her pocket – a frog wearing a Hufflepuff scarf. Needless to say, Ze's expression had quite a lot in common with a goldfish facing the funerary horrors of a toilet bowl.

'What's the matter?' Sirius was asking even as he ploughed through the door and into the street. 'Where is he? I'll kill him.' His gaze was jerking back and forth, obviously searching for Colin Cross and an appropriate place to flay him alive.

'I –'

'What's he done?' Sirius continued right over her, his nostrils flaring in fury as he imagined the duel he was about to fight. Really, it was a pity swords had gone out of fashion, because at this moment –

'He - er – he's just here –'

It took Sirius a moment to realise that Ze was speaking, but when he did his head whipped round on her with terrifying speed. 'What?' he asked. 'He isn't here.'

'Ahhhm –'

'If he's hurt you and done a runner, thinking I wouldn't catch up –'

'No! No, fuck – okay look,' she said, grabbing hold of his arm and glancing up and down the street. They were garnering a few stares, which was hardly surprising: Sirius looked ready to throttle the next person to pass by, and Ze seemed poised to shatter with nerves. 'Just, um, just come this way,' she said, and – dragging him with incredible force – towed him up the street.

Sirius's first thought was that she was taking him somewhere he couldn't do anyone any harm. His second was that she'd already done Cross harm, and was taking him to the body. This made him equal parts furious and pleased – furious that he wasn't able to do the damage himself, pleased that she'd gone off the bastard on her own. So when she jerked to a stop, peered back and forth, and then shoved him through a garden gate, he steeled himself not to look too gleeful over the grisly scene that awaited him. But once he was inside the garden, there was nothing but a gurgling fountain and heaps of leaves.

'Where is he?' he demanded, swinging round. 'There's no body –'

'Of course there isn't a body,' Ze snapped, her tone adding "you stupid git" without wasting any breath. 'Look, this is really weird and – '

'What did he do to you?' Sirius interrupted, bending forward slightly so that their eyes were on a level. He was so intent on discovering the crime that he didn't notice the peaky cast of Ze's face, or the way her eyes were snapping with equal measures of impatience and terror. 'Seriously – did he say something or do something –'

'I turned him into a frog,' she blurted.

This shut Sirius right up.

'It was an accident – at least, I think it was,' she babbled. 'I have no idea how it happened – I certainly didn't mean to turn him into a frog! One minute he was snogging me and the next there was no one there and I looked down and there was this – this frog - '

Sirius wasn't sure if he should step back from the madness or lean forward to ascertain the signs of it. Because this really wasn't normal. Not even a little bit. Ze was talking absolute rubbish. A frog? She thought she'd turned Cross into a – 'Oh fuck,' Sirius said.

Because he was staring dead at a large, suspiciously Cross-like – there was no other word for it – frog.

'Told you,' Ze said on a rush of breath.

The frog – Colin, Sirius supposed he ought to be calling it – was perched on her outstretched hands, and as though wanting to join in the conversation, let out an enormous rhibbit.

'You're sure that's him?' Sirius asked, because his brain wasn't quite up to taking this.

'Who else could it be?' Ze asked.

'Er…it could just be a frog?' he suggested hesitantly. 'I mean, they're not exactly rare and mysterious beasts- '

'So you're saying that Colin was kissing me and then he was miraculously on the other side of the garden, moving so fast I couldn't see him?' she snapped impatiently. 'Come on Sirius – that's impossible! No one's that fast, and I'd have felt him turning invisible or something – he was right here.' She gestured a hand's span from her body, indicating Cross's position. 'Besides, it bloody well looks like him!'

Sirius stared at the frog. 'Bloody fucking hell,' he breathed. 'I knew that smarmy grin reminded me of something. He looks like a frog! Colin Cross looks like a frog!' he crowed. And then the rest of her statement hit him. 'Wait - snogging? You were snogging?!'

'Sirius – '

'He just dragged you in here and started snogging you? That pervy little bastard – '

'Sirius!' she shouted, effectively breaking off his tirade. 'Focus! My date is an amphibian!'

'Reptile,' he said automatically.

'What?' she positively spat.

'Reptile,' he repeated. 'If he were a toad he'd be an amphibian, but frogs are definitely re-'

'Oh will you shut up,' she snarled. 'The point is, he's not human and I need to get him back that way!'

Sirius shrugged, not bothered in the least by the idea that Colin Cross might be spending the remainder of his – hopefully short – life snapping up flies. 'Why not just leave him here?'

She gaped at him. 'Leave him?' she repeated, horrified. 'Just leave him here, where anything might happen?'

He nodded, smiling hopefully.

'Are you mad?' When he didn't reply she let out an inarticulate growl of frustration. 'He's a person Sirius, a living, breathing person - not a frog. We have to change him back!'

'And how do you propose to do that?' Sirius asked sensibly. 'Do you know what changed him in the first place?'

'Why do you think I came and found you?' she snapped. Oddly enough, this made Sirius feel decidedly thrilled.

'Well what do you think?' he prodded, trying not to sound smug.

'I have no idea – could be anything. The garden, the day, the phase of the moon, the fact that we were snogging – '

'Do blokes frequently turn into frogs when you're snogging them then?' he asked, hoping for a joke.

'Well I don't know,' she shot back with a touch of acid. 'This was rather the first time I've tried it.'

Sirius opened his mouth, and nothing – absolutely nothing – came out. His vision was slowly being taken over by a red haze of rage, and he realised that he was shaking. It wasn't right. It wasn't right at all. 'You had,' he growled in a low, dangerous voice, 'your first kiss with that?' He punctuated the statement with a finger jab in the frog's direction.

'I don't see what the problem –' Ze began, but Sirius wasn't listening.

Ze's first kiss should not – should never - have been with Colin Cross. Cross wasn't fit to lick her quidditch boots, much less her lips. Cross was so completely wrong for Ze that he should have been confined to a different world – one where stupid dimples and clumsy snogs were acceptable. That was not Ze's world. In Ze's world kisses would always be perfect and amazing and heart stopping. And they wouldn't ever come from anyone but Sirius.

He was so caught up in his anger that for a moment Sirius didn't quite realise how that had come out. And then when he did realise it, he felt utterly gut-punched. Because he'd just discovered he was arse over ears for the girl standing in front of him. Or not really discovered, because he'd always rather known, but now it was out there, and he had to deal with it, and think about it, and it was already making his life exponentially more difficult. For instance, he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her until she couldn't breathe…but that wouldn't help anyone, as he'd probably end up turned into a frog.

'Sirius?' Ze was saying. 'Er….Sirius…' He forced his eyes to snap up to hers and she tilted her head back and forth a time or two. 'Sorry, you were just, um, a bit muzzy looking.'

I just realised how badly I want you. 'I was just thinking of ways he could have got transfigured.'

'Do you think it's something to do with the garden?' she asked hopefully. 'Or do you think its, well, er…something to do with me?'

Sirius stared into her face and realised two things: first, that she had the longest eyelashes he'd ever seen, and second, that he was in heaps of trouble. 'I have no idea.'

*.

Ze could never have explained why she'd gone running off after Sirius. She'd just known she had to. Moments after she had accepted that, somehow, Colin was a frog, she'd been charging out of the garden, hastily shoving the frog – Colin, she had to remember to call him Colin – into her pocket. She hadn't even been sure she was on her way to the pub until her fist had been pounding on the window. By that point her heart had been positively beating out of her chest and her head felt ready to explode. Watching Sirius step over Peter's body on the floor had been the second most heart-warming moment of her life, beaten only by the way he'd come pounding through the door, demanding to know what was wrong.

There was just something comforting about the fact that he knew things had gone wrong – and perhaps something comforting in the fact that he obviously expected to be allowed to do something about it. Not that Ze didn't think she couldn't fix this without his help. She knew she could – but she also knew that it would take longer, hurt worse, and probably end with Colin having webbed toes. Two heads were always better than one, especially if one head belonged to a Marauder. They might not be much on punctuality, maturity, or working for the greater good, but they were tops when it came to random and sinister animal transformations. Or, she had hoped they were. At the moment, Sirius seemed more hung up on the fact that she and Colin had been snogging than anything else. If she hadn't been clutching her wet and slimy date in her hands, the entire episode of his stopping mid-sentence to gape at her would have been hilariously funny. As it was, she'd felt decidedly nervous when his eyes began to bug out of his head in fury. Nervous, and a tiny bit put out. After all, he was behaving as though it was the most incomprehensible thing in the world that a boy would want to kiss her. Given the gender-confusion she'd lived with for the past several years she supposed she shouldn't be able to blame him, but still…

And then he'd positively gone off his head when she'd revealed that it was her first kiss. That had been humiliating enough in and of itself, as she knew that most girls had at least been snogged in passing by the time they'd got to seventeen. But the way Sirius was behaving, anyone would have thought Ze had told him she and Colin had been re-enacting the Kama Sutra, not innocently locking lips. Was it really that horrifying to him, the idea that she might be able to attract a bit of amorous attention? Did he really see her as such a younger sister that he couldn't stomach the idea of a boy putting his hands on her? Her eyes narrowed as she thought about this, about the fact that he did have a distressing habit of guiding her in that vaguely protective, eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head way of older brothers. Which was absolutely infuriating. Sirius was not her older brother, and she definitely didn't want him classifying her under "fraternal responsibilities". She couldn't explain why, only that the idea of being thought of as a sister rankled horribly. So horribly that she didn't realise she was squeezing Colin the Frog until he let out a sharp ribbit of pain.

'Sorry,' she said automatically, patting him on his broad, clammy head, grimacing as she avoided his pop-eyes.

'You're apologising to the frog,' Sirius said in disbelief.

'Don't call him "the frog",' Ze frowned, mentally berating herself for doing just that. 'He has got a name, you know.'

'Yes – creaturus slimius or something equally arcane,' Sirius quipped back.

Ze glared. 'That isn't funny – what if he can hear you?' If she'd known where a frog's ears were, she would have tried to cover them. Sirius shrugged, but didn't quite meet her eyes and Ze knew that he was feeling a bit guilty. 'You really have no idea how we can change him back?'

'I've just said so, haven't I?' he asked. 'Look,' he continued awkwardly when she gave defeated sigh. 'Stuff like this happens all the time, okay? That's why it's called magic. So, we just have to figure out what went wrong, and then how to make it right, yeah?' He really had no idea what he was saying, or if it made any sense or not. It was just that he couldn't bear seeing that intense look of worry and fear on her face. And it bothered him horribly that she was worried and afraid for someone else – a male someone else.

'We just have to figure out what went wrong?' she asked sceptically. 'Sirius, I think we can safely say that everything has gone wrong –'

'Have you tried kissing him again?' Sirius asked logically.

She just gave him a withering glance.

'I'm not joking,' he said, feeling a bit impatient. 'Magic's weird – if you don't do things exactly right, all sorts of things can go wrong. Just think about levitation day in Charms – one syllable wrong and you've got a whole flock of chickens on your head.'

'Do chickens come in flocks?' she asked.

'I think they – not funny,' he snapped when he saw her hiding a smile. 'You're the one on a date with Pop-Eyes.'

Her mouth pressed into a flat line and she shot him a glare – but it didn't stop her from realising that, apart from the fact Colin currently had a three foot tongue and could breathe under water, this was the most fun she'd had all day. 'I don't think kissing him again is going to –'

'Look, I don't want you to do it anymore than you do,' he began, 'but it's got to be worth a try –'

'Sirius, that sort of rubbish only works in fairy stories –'

'Yeah, well, it might work in real life too. I won't tell anyone,' he added with a small smile when she still looked miserable. 'Never breathe a word – it'll be our little secret.'

'How many of those are we going to have?' she muttered under her breath, and Sirius found himself struggling not to say, As many as you want.

This is not the time, he told himself sternly. At least wait until she's turned the other bloke back into a human. There was a long mental pause. Perhaps we should rethink that wording…

'Well,' Ze was murmuring, turning the frog – Colin, must remember this is Colin – around in her hands. 'Here goes nothing.' As Sirius watched she raised the fr- Colin up until he was level with her face, gave a little grimace and, shooting a look over Colin's head at Sirius, said, 'You tell a soul, and I'm coming after you with arsenic.'

'Cross my heart,' Sirius said, rather thinking he meant it.

With another little fortifying sigh, she squished her eyes shut, leaned forward and pressed her lips against the frog's mouth.

It wasn't pretty. Ze grimaced. Sirius grimaced. The frog burped.

And then, in one bizarre moment, the world twisted sideways and gave a little shimmy, and Colin Cross was tumbling backwards onto the ground with a surprised "Ribbit!" that turned into an "Aggh!" somewhere along the way. It came out more as more of a "Riibbagggh!" and by the time it was over he was sprawled on his back, staring up at them, his cheery yellow and black scarf flopping ridiculously round his neck.

He took a few deep breaths, his hands rapidly patting over his body as though assuring themselves that everything – ribcage, spinal chord – was in the proper place. Ze stared wide-eyed at Sirius over his head. 'What the bloody hell happened?' Cross gasped.

'You fell,' Ze blurted, at the same moment Sirius said, 'We thought you were having a fit.'

'Um, you fell down so we thought you were having a fit,' Ze hurriedly reframed. 'See, ah, you, er, well…you just sort of went over backward, and then you were thrashing around and…'

'And I was walking by and heard Ze calling your name,' Sirius filled in, 'and thought I'd better come see if she needed help.'

This earned him a very narrow-eyed glare from Cross. 'You heard her calling my name?'

Sirius realised the various implications this could have, and barely refrained from punching Cross's face in. Ze's ears went scarlet. 'She was upset,' he ground out. 'I thought I'd better see. You alright now, or do you need to wallow around a bit more?'

This time it was Cross's turn to look embarrassed. 'Sorry,' he mumbled to Ze, and hurried to pull himself off the ground. 'I, um, I – '

'Look,' Ze began, her cheeks flushing sweetly, and Sirius suddenly knew that she was about to tell Cross everything - the whole, ridiculous scenario, from snog to finish. Which just had "disaster" writ all over. 'Er, Colin –'

'You should probably stop in at hospital,' Sirius interrupted, stepping just a bit closer to Ze and doing his best to look sincere. 'Having a faint's nothing to joke about.'

Colour rose sharp and bright in Cross's cheeks. 'I didn't faint!' he burst out.

'No, you didn't –' Ze began again, shooting Sirius a look that said "I know exactly what you're doing, don't think I don't". It was rather fetching actually, a discovery that had him grinning loopily. And then Sirius had to kick himself once for thinking the word "fetching" and twice for being idiot enough to let it show.

'Look, I'd better go,' Cross said hurriedly, backing away from them and darting longing glances at the gate. 'I, um, I've just remembered….'

'Something?' Sirius suggested, innocently helpful.

'Colin, wait,' Ze said, stepping round Sirius toward an increasingly nervous looking Cross. 'You should know –'

'Yeah, something,' Crossed nodded, too rapidly to be flattering, looking desperate to be out of her sight. 'I, ah - right. Laters,' he said and, with one last, humiliated glance, fled.

*.

Ze stared numbly as Colin darted through the gate, her shoulders slumping as she watched him go. Until he'd sprung up, suddenly so eager to flee, she hadn't even realised that it was going to hurt. Not that she fancied him, really – it was more just that he was the first boy to ever pay any attention to her, and the fact that she'd sent him running – literally – after a few scant hours…well, it couldn't be good, could it? Of course, she doubted that many girls could lay claim to such an extraordinary story on their first date. A botched kiss, yeah, and probably a bit of awkwardness, but actually turning a guy into an amphibian – sorry, reptile -? She was fairly certain that she had that particular market cornered.

Heaving a sigh, she shoved her hands into her pockets, resisting the urge to shove her fingers through her hair. 'I am such a disaster,' she mumbled.

'No you're not.'

She jumped – just a bit, but it was still a jump. She'd completely forgot Sirius was even there, but the sound of his voice had her whirling round to face him. He was standing just opposite the fountain, mirroring her pose, his hands tucked into his pockets, the wind ruffling at his hair. He too was wearing a grey jumper and jeans, and she had the sudden thought that they were very well matched. The realisation had the corner of her mouth quirking up.

'At least she's smiling again,' he deadpanned.

'Just thinking that not many people can tell a story like this,' she improvised, suddenly shy at the thought of telling him they were mirror images. It was silly, and she really did have much more important things to think about. Well, maybe not important –

'And she's back to frowning,' Sirius sighed, circling round the fountain to stand beside her. 'It wasn't that bad,' he coaxed when she remained silent, bumping her shoulder lightly with his.

The gesture didn't elicit the smile he'd hoped it would. Rather, when she looked up at him, her eyes were swimming with all sorts of things – beginning with embarrassment and travelling right on towards something that looked horribly like pain. 'I just can't do anything right, can I?'

'Well, you've got the most amazing Treble Feint of anyone at school. And you're decent at Transfiguration – and bloody brilliant at running.'

For a moment he thought she might throttle him, and then she let out a breathy little sigh and said, 'There's no such thing as being brilliant at running.'

'Sure there is,' he replied companionably, wondering if it would be too much to put his arm around her. 'You just have to be better than me.'

'I turned him into a frog,' she blurted.

'And then you turned him back.'

'Why wouldn't you let me tell him what had happened? He needs to know, Sirius – there could be all sorts of – of side effects.'

Sirius tried not to look too pleased at the thought of Colin Cross spending the rest of his life hopping about, munching on the odd fly. 'It's probably just one of those freak things,' he said, waving a hand to indicate that there was nothing serious about it. 'Probably something to do with the garden – weird stuff like that is always happening to your sort.'

He was so deeply involved in the debate as to whether or not he could hug her that he didn't realise she'd gone still at his side. The Voice of Reason was just pontificating on why touching her was the worst idea since thong underpants for men when she said, '"My sort"?' in a thick, slightly strangled voice.

Sirius, who had had enough experience with girls to know when his chances of getting physical had just gone down the toilet, immediately fought to focus his attention where it belonged. 'I didn't mean that the way it sounded –'

'What, precisely, is my "sort", Sirius?' she ground out.

'Ah, "sort" was the wrong word –' he tried again.

'Would that be the sort that no one notices?' she asked, voice growing more heated by the second. 'Or the sort that can't get anywhere with the bloke she fancies? Or the sort –'

'No, I just meant that you're a Meridian and – wait, what?' he snapped, stopping mid-explanation. 'Did you just say - what -'

'What do you mean, "I'm a Meridian"? Of course I'm a Me-'

'Never mind that,' Sirius interrupted savagely. 'What do you mean, the sort that can't get anywhere with the boy she fancies?'

'I mean it exactly like I said it!' she exploded. 'I mean that -'

Sirius thought the top of his head might fly off. 'You mean that you actually fancy Colin Cross?' he snarled. 'You mean you actually like that disgusting, smarmy –'

'Yeah! That's exactly what I mean,' she shouted back, suddenly furious with Sirius for thinking that she couldn't possibly be interested in someone of the opposite sex, for thinking that, despite everything she'd told him over the past weeks, she wasn't really a girl at all. 'He's a nice guy, Sirius, and unlike some people, he happens to notice that I'm not a boy!'

'I bloody well know you're not a boy!' Sirius roared. 'Believe me – I know, okay? And, unlike some people, I wouldn't ask you out on a date just because I thought I had a sure chance of getting off with you.' Ze couldn't have looked any more surprised – or hurt - if he'd slapped her. 'Shit – I didn't mean –'

'No, no I rather think you did,' she interrupted, her voice shaky but growing stronger. 'I think you meant every word. But don't worry,' she said, now sounding quite cold, 'I already knew, so you can spare yourself the trouble of thinking "poor little Ze". It isn't a surprise, see, because contrary to what you might think, I am not a complete idiot. I've got ears, and eyes, and a brain - I know that there's every chance Colin thought I was going to be the easiest shag he'd ever get. I know that everyone else thought that too, and I know what people say about me - what they say about us. Funny, isn't it Sirius, that you shagging me makes me a whore, but me shagging you just makes you cooler? It must be nice, really, to know that when people whisper about you behind your back they aren't talking about how easy you are.' Her voice had taken on a raw, ravaged quality, and her eyes were positively burning. 'Forgive me if I'm a bit jealous,' she mocked, 'if I don't understand why going out with Colin Cross- even if was a- a pity date, or if he was just trying to get into my knickers – why it was so bloody wrong. I'm so sorry that I wanted a chance to see what it was like to go to the village with someone, even if it means everyone is going to whisper about me. Not that it really matters, does it, because it isn't like they weren't already doing it!'

Sirius knew that the entire situation was out of hand – he knew that saying another word would be tantamount to digging his own grave, and that if he didn't tread carefully this could quickly become a situation from which there was no going back. He knew that Ze was angry, and that a great portion of her venom was the result of her own wounded pride, but that didn't stop it from getting under his skin. The plain fact was that she ought to know better. Ought to know that he would never countenance anyone insulting her, never tolerate rumours about her simply because they made him look good. The idea that she would assume he was capable of something like that had his vision going red, and so he took it out on her before he could stop himself. 'So what, Ze, you just thought you'd use Cross, was that it? Since he was nice enough to chat you up, you reckoned you'd take advantage of the situation no matter how it made you look?' Ze opened her mouth, but he ran roughshod right over her. 'That's right, you've said people were already gossiping about you, so what did a bit more matter?' He gave her a mocking smile and made a tsking noise through his teeth. 'But did you think about poor Colin? Were you planning on compensating him for his troubles? Or were you just going to be a tease and give him a quick kiss and a wave goodbye?'

It was quite probably the cruellest thing he'd ever said to anyone, and there was a part of him shouting and raving inside his head, begging his mouth to shut the bloody hell up. But all he could do was stare at Ze, who was looking at him as though she'd never seen him before. There was a fine tremor running through her muscles, and she seemed perilously close to shattering. 'You really are a bastard,' she whispered. And then she turned her back on him and began to walk away.

Sirius could feel something in the region of his solar plexus going into meltdown, but all his stupid mouth could do was call, 'You seem to have a penchant for those!' after her retreating back.

She stiffened, freezing mid-step. For a moment he thought she would keep walking, but then she turned, slowly and with mechanical precision. Her face was completely devoid of emotion, and he was too far away now to see her eyes. 'You know what Sirius?' she asked, her voice perfectly, eerily calm. 'I think you're jealous. I think you're so bloody jealous you can't see.' She shook her head, her hair jumping in the breeze. 'Everyone thinks you're shagging me rotten, and here I am out on a date with someone else. But you, well, you haven't got anyone, have you? Even Grace isn't chasing after you, begging to have you back. And I think you're jealous. Jealous that poor little Ze got invited out, even if it was only by a guy who thought he was going to get some. Oh don't worry, I know you don't fancy me,' she said with a self-deprecating little laugh. 'I'm not mad. The way you treat me, anyone would think I was your little sister.' She folded her arms and put her head on one side before continuing in a decidedly derisive voice. 'Well, except for when you're imagining me naked just because I'm holding a dragon's femur – that isn't very brotherly behaviour, is it? But don't worry, I understand. You might be in heat because you've made some stupid promise not to touch yourself or anyone else, and you might not be able to take your eyes off my tits, but it isn't anything personal.' She fairly well spat the word out, and until that moment she hadn't quite realised how angry she had been that he'd said it – stood in front of her, caught out staring at her body, and had the nerve to tell her it wasn't personal. It was beyond insulting - it was bloody well a stab in the heart.

Sirius's throat was working furiously, trying to get words around a sudden blockage, a sudden lump that was making his eyes water and his ears roar. 'Ze,' he managed to get out. 'Ze I –'

'Really, you don't have to say anything,' she cut him off, all the derision and mockery leeched out of her voice, leaving it quiet and achingly sad. And suddenly Sirius realised that what he had mistaken for indifference was actually a rapidly cracking mask of forced calm. 'Let's just leave it before there's nothing left to fight over – because then we really will have a reason never to speak to one another again.'

And with that, she turned on her heel, and walked with carefully measured steps out of the garden.

Sirius, idiot that he was, watched her go.

*.*.*.*.*

'Someone kick you in the nadgers?'

Sirius, who was sat in a window in the Northwest Tower, jerked forward so sharply he nearly tumbled onto the floor. A quick glance out the window showed that he'd been sequestered up here for hours, poring over his fight with Ze. It was nearing dark now, and he'd only managed to come to the conclusion that his entire world had collapsed around the time she'd walked out of that garden. And he was angry about it. That was the worst bit – he was still so bloody furious. Furious with her for saying things that were so obviously untrue, furious with himself for reacting like a brainless sod, furious with Colin Cross for getting turned into a frog and setting the whole mess off. While he knew that both of them had been speaking in anger, saying things that they hadn't honestly meant, he couldn't take the sting out of so many of the barbs. The words "it isn't anything personal" kept playing over and over in his head, the injustice of her throwing them in his face almost as galling as the knowledge that he'd deserved it. Now the idea of returning to the common room, or going to supper in the Great Hall – the thought of seeing her again without having resolved the horrible churning of emotions in his gut – had him feeling physically ill. Realising that this was probably what had James asking after the condition of his nether regions, Sirius heaved a sigh and glanced up at his friend with a hopeless expression. 'Bit higher up than that.'

'What,' James asked, his brow furrowing, 'they get you in the stomach?'

Sirius winced, not quite desperate enough to say "no, my heart". 'Never mind,' he mumbled.

The genuine frustration in his voice had James dropping all appearance of joviality and sinking down onto the windowsill. 'So what's up?'

Sirius smiled faintly. Most people assumed that James, with his messy hair and gangling, boyish charm, was all laughs – a misconception James was happy to live with. But Sirius knew better than most the lengths James would go to to help a friend. He just wasn't sure he could explain what had happened – or how he felt. 'That's thirty seconds of silence,' James commented, leaning back and propping his foot against the opposite wall, mirroring Sirius's posture. 'Never a good sign.'

'Have you ever said something to someone in the heat of the moment, and only realised afterwards just how badly you've fucked yourself?' Sirius heard himself ask.

James arched a brow. 'Have you ever witnessed a conversation with Lily?' he shot back. When Sirius failed to crack a smile at this (rather feeble, he admitted) joke, he sat forward and tried again. 'Maybe you'd better give me the circumstances of exactly what we're talking about here. What sort of moment, what sort of heat, and what sort of afterwards?'

Where to start? Sirius asked himself. Do we begin with the fact that I'm completely gormless and had no idea I was falling for one of my best friends? Do we speed forward to the part where we have a blazing row for no other reason than the fact that we'd wilfully misunderstood one another? Or do we stop in the middle, where I start imagining her naked and she realises what's going on? Sirius felt the heat of a deep blush spread over his shoulders, up his throat and across his face toward his scalp.

James took one look at him and his jaw dropped. 'Wait – moment, heat, afterwards like sex moment, heat, afterwards?' he gasped. 'You're out of the bet?'

'No!' Sirius cried. 'No, definitely not!' Then, more quietly – and more bitterly – he added, 'things didn't go well enough for that. Not nearly.'

James slumped back, looking faintly relieved but also faintly worried. 'Okay…'

Sirius shook his head and tried to snap himself into some semblance of intelligence. James was trying rather hard, and here he was doing a brilliant impression of Troll Contemplating New Technology. The trick was to concentrate on the main point of the argument – which, given Sirius didn't want to focus on Ze any more than he had to at the moment, could only be the issue of his own idiocy. 'Look, let's say that there's a girl, right?'

'Right,' James nodded, very diplomatically not asking which girl.

'And let's say, well, let's say you've got something of a, er, a history with her. You following?' James nodded rapidly. 'Right, so, you've known this girl awhile, and sort of happen to spend a lot of time around her just because, and – well, let's say that something sort of, um, embarrassing happens, yeah?'

'Embarrassing?' James repeated, his tone tinged with uncertainty.

Sirius desperately didn't want to clarify, but felt that some sort of explanation was needed to fully express the horror of the situation. 'Um, say she catches you out – you know, staring at her.'

'Staring at her?' James now sounded as though he were attempting to puzzle through one of Peter's pre-revision essays.

'Eyeing her up,' Sirius snapped out, waving his hands round wildly. 'Perving on her. Staring at her tits, imagining her without her clothes - leering. Got it?'

'Oh yeah,' James nodded, sitting back. 'Got it.'

'Right well, she caught me,' Sirius mumbled. James nodded, tactfully not asking any awkward questions, letting the silence do the work for him. Sirius shook his head, sooty hair swinging, his face shuttered and his gaze turned inward. He looked, James judged, completely besotted – an experience that was, Potter well knew, both exhilarating and horrifying. The only questions was –

'It was pretty obvious, of course, what I was thinking,' Sirius muttered. 'No way she could mistake it, really. 'Course, she didn't go and get all embarrassed - that would've been too easy. No, she had to go and laugh.' Sirius savagely jerked at the sleeve of his jumper as he spoke, and James winced at the "laugh" – that more or less answered what he'd been about to ask, which was "does she fancy you back?" No girl laughed at a chap in that condition – at least, not one with a heart. Which, where Sirius was concerned, left just one candidate…

'And of course I had to go and say something so bloody stupid –'

'Sirius,' James said gently, when his friend looked in danger of ripping his jumper to shreds with his fingertips. He patted Sirius on the shoulder and tried to sound compassionate. 'Look mate, you shouldn't let her tear you up like this – she just isn't worth it.'

'How do you know?' Sirius positively shouted, jumping up with his jaw jutting out mulishly. 'You barely even notice she's alive, so how the hell do you know if she's "worth it"? Eh?'

James fought the desperate urge to scratch his head – it was really just too cliché. 'Er…can we clarify something?' he asked hesitantly.

'Like what?' Sirius snarled, pacing. 'Whether you've got a brain?'

'Noooo…' James said slowly. 'Whether or not we're talking about Grace?'

'Grace?' Sirius asked, as though he could barely remember who she was. 'Why would we be talking about Grace?'

'Ah…well…you were, um, rather, well, in love with her –'

'That was ages ago,' Sirius dismissed with a wave. 'I've grown up since then. And I've realised she's a useless cow.'

'Here here,' James muttered. When Sirius just continued pacing and frowning with equal fervour, James cleared his throat. 'So, if you don't mind my asking, who - exactly - are we talking about?'

Again Sirius flushed a deep, rich red. James felt his brows rise: Sirius had always been shy, but usually he was a bit more open with his oldest friend. When the only reply to the question was an unintelligible mutter, uttered with Sirius turned half away, James had to ask for a repeat. 'I said "Ze",' Sirius snapped. 'As is Ze Meridian, okay?'

James had been prepared for a surprise, but he was discovering that this was downright shock. Aside from being gobsmacked at the idea of Sirius fancying Ze, he was suddenly gobsmacked over the question of why it hadn't happened sooner. 'Ze?' he found himself asking. 'Our Ze?'

'No one else has got one, have they?' Sirius replied sarcastically. 'And there's no need to sound like you can't believe it – I know it'll never work –'

'Don't be such a twat! I'm just trying to figure how the two of you aren't married and having lots of sex and babies already –'

'Please don't say that,' Sirius began, looking pained.

'Oh come on, you know that's exactly what you want,' James interrupted. 'Not necessarily in that order, of course, but that's the only way it can possibly end –'

'Have you been reading those novels again? This isn't 1802 – and I am not ready to be married.'

'Of course you're not,' James said with a wave that indicated this was a minor detail. 'But when you are, Ze's the only possible candidate – you two were practically made for one another.'

'Yeah, we're a regular matched pair of factory rejects,' Sirius muttered.

'Don't be stupid!' James was still gushing, shaking his head. 'You two are almost as well matched as Lily and I are.'

'And if we needed proof that you live in an alternate universe,' Sirius muttered, 'there it would be…'

'Have you told her yet? Oh no – that's right, you've completely stuffed it up, haven't you?'

The look Sirius shot James could only be described as venomous.

'I mean, not that you've told me how,' James added, as though this were bound to be a detail so minor as to be inconsequential. 'Well, all you have to do is think of a way to apologise, right?'

'It isn't that easy,' Sirius groaned, sinking back down and scrubbing his hands over his face. 'This is not Grace we're talking about – grovelling will get me nowhere. Well, I don't think it would. And anyway, I can't grovel because, one, I'm not sure I want to, and two, she doesn't know I fancy her.'

'I hate to be the one to tell you mate, but you aren't exactly subtle,' James pointed out. 'At least, not to those of us who know you well. And, clichéd as it sounds, Ze knows you. She's more or less got that female intuition, I know you inside out, discovered-all-your-deepest-secrets-just-because thing going on. Sort of sexy, really…'

'She doesn't need any help in that direction, thanks,' Sirius snorted. 'And may I just point out that, until I told you, you had no idea?'

James looked properly chastised, but quickly rallied. 'Well, how hard can it be to tell her? I mean, you just buy Hogsmeade out of flowers and chocolates, shower her room in rose petals, and then get down on one knee to confess your undying love. What's so hard about that?'

Sirius stared for a moment, then shook his head. 'You are the reason the rest of us have such a horrible reputation for being unromantic. Besides,' he added before James could get insulted, 'Ze isn't the sort who'd fancy all that. She's probably allergic to roses. She does like chocolate though- Honeyduke's Doubledark Truffles. And something called dairymilk, but I haven't quite got that one sorted. Anyway, my point being that she's more of a pint at the pub sort of girl.'

James was shaking his head. 'Trust me, flowers are the key –'

'But it doesn't matter,' Sirius continued right overtop him, 'because she's beyond furious at the moment and she thinks I'll never fancy her!'

'She might be a bit oblivious,' James said sensibly, 'and maybe even a bit moody at times, but she isn't stupid. Just tell her.'

Sirius shook his head, looking positively miserable. 'You don't understand – she thinks I look at her and see a – a sister.'

'No,' James said.

'Oh yes she does – she told me. Today. When we were rowing.'

James winced: this had just gotten worse – Ze never rowed. She was, if possible, more easy-going than Sirius was. And then it struck him that Ze telling Sirius that Sirius considered Ze a sister probably meant that Ze was a bit bitter about the fact. 'So she was upset then, about you thinking of her as a sister?'

Sirius sighed and began to pick at his jumper again. 'It's more complicated than that.'

James thought of the Ze-telling-Sirius-what-Sirius-thought-of-Ze conundrum. 'Can it get more complicated than that?'

The look on Sirius's face said "you have no idea". 'Of course it can,' he replied.

'Maybe you'd better explain – from the beginning this time,' James added, shooting his friend a very stern look. It was surprisingly effective, a glance that had Head Boy written dead through it. Sirius blushed again. 'It must've been pretty bad, to have you blushing like that,' James chuckled, sounding unflatteringly gleeful. The blush intensified in response. James had the audacity to cackle, and Sirius shot him a glare; after a few more riffs on the Wicked Witch theme, he desisted. Trying to look appropriately understanding, he straightened up and nodded. 'Right, so, start at the beginning.'

Sirius squirmed. James wished that he had some sweets and a more comfortable seating arrangement – this was prime entertainment. 'I don't know exactly when it started, okay? I guess…' Sirius trailed off. 'I guess I've always been a bit, well, a bit like everyone else, never noticing her. And, of course, Grace would've cut me into bits if I'd looked at another girl while I was going out with her, so there was that -'

'Perhaps we could fast forward to the scenes of horrifying humiliation?' James suggested hopefully.

'I am trying to make a point,' Sirius glowered, the epitome of affronted amour.

'Right,' James, properly chastised, subsided.

'As I was saying –' there was a very significant glare – 'it just sort of…happened. Maybe she started talking, or maybe I just started listening – and as soon as that happened I started looking, too. She's brilliant, Prongs, absolutely brilliant – she's got this way of making things sound –'

'If you want to sing her praises, buy a lute,' James interrupted, impatient. 'Get to the good stuff.'

'The good stuff?' Sirius repeated, not sure whether to laugh or snarl and settling on a sort of hysterical-giggle-with-glare. 'The "good stuff" would begin with my noticing how long her legs are, and culminate with her catching me staring at her arse, boasting the most obvious stiffie since the Scots invented the kilt.'

James was silent for a long, long moment. And then one corner of his mouth wobbled…and the wobble turned into a wiggle, and soon the wiggle was a laugh and the laugh was a roar and then the walls were shaking.

'It's not that funny,' Sirius muttered.

James just sucked in another breath and kept howling. Sirius slumped back against the wall and waited for the guffaws to stop. It was actually a rather nice break, giving him a chance to play over in his head the instant when Ze had looked up at him and oh-so-cruelly said "But don't worry, I understand - it isn't anything personal". Really, that had been such a lovely moment he just didn't want it to go out of his mind.

'Okay,' James gasped. 'Okay I'm through.' Sirius glanced at him and he let out another burst of – they could only be described as such – giggles. 'Really,' he promised, once they had subsided. 'That was the last, I swear.' Sirius just snorted sceptically. 'Look, you have to admit that is absolutely hilarious. I mean, she caught you perving on her and you were hard as a bloody rock!'

'Forgive me if the memory twinges a bit,' Sirius replied sarcastically. 'It was rather more embarrassing to be caught like that by the girl you fancy.'

'But did you know?' James asked, sobering instantly.

'Know? Having no blood in your brain isn't really a feeling you mistake –'

'No, I mean did you know you fancied her? Then. At that time. Had you realised it?' Sirius opened his mouth to say "of course!" and realised that this would be a horrible lie. 'Hmm,' James murmured. 'I'll take that expression as a "no". What did you tell her? I mean, that isn't really standard behaviour for you, and I'm assuming that the level of your, er, interest was as much a product of the terms of our little bet as it was Ze herself.'

Sirius winced.

'What?' James asked. 'Did you make up some stupid lie?'

'Er…not exactly…' Sirius mumbled.

'Sirius,' James said sternly. 'What are you not telling me?'

'Ah, well…er…let's just say that, um, there's a slight chance…there's a slight chance….'

'There's a slight chance I might die of old age waiting for you to finish that sentence?'

'There's a slight chance Ze might know about the bet,' Sirius said on a rush.

James stared. And stared. And then he said, 'WHAT?'

'I didn't tell her!' Sirius cried.

'Then how –'

'It was Clive, right? If I'd told her I would have been disqualified. But Clive let slip, and she knows.'

James gaped a bit more, and finally said. 'This is a disaster.'

'Well, not really, it isn't like she'll tell,' Sirius groused, realising he felt that he ought to defend her honour.

'But she's probably been laughing at us!' James wailed. 'Merlin and Morganna, she's probably been weeing her pants!'

'Actually, I think she's more annoyed than anything – says we're off our trolley,' Sirius shrugged. 'That, and we're getting stupider, apparently. Loads of mumbling and blubbing during classes. And it means that she'll never believe I fancy her,' he added morosely.

'Why would she think that?' James asked, clearly still hung up on the fact that Ze might be laughing at him.

'Because,' you idiot, Sirius's tone implied, 'she knows I'm absolutely gagging for it. If I try to tell her I like her, she'll assume it's my hormones talking and tell me to bugger off.'

'And maybe she has every reason to make that assumption,' James replied with devastating logic.

Sirius, who had been expecting a bit of brotherly reassurance, opened his mouth to argue and then stopped. Because, of course, James was right. The only indication – solid, bankable indication – he'd given Ze that he fancied her had come in the form of very obvious and gauche lust. And at the time of the incident he hadn't had any idea that the attraction went deeper than Ze's beautiful, beautiful body. He'd known he thought highly of her as a friend, but he'd still been…well, he'd still been denying that he felt anything more. Which made him absolutely disgusting. And what was worse, he'd had the nerve – the incredible insolence, the unutterable impudence, the sheer bloody cheek - to throw his insincerity in her face. 'I am a complete bastard,' he breathed.

'I'd only tell your mum that from a distance. Like, say, across an ocean,' James quipped. When Sirius didn't issue the requisite snort of laughter, he looked a bit closer to see that his friend appeared to be suffering from an attack of something so alien and fearsome that James actually drew back in fear: Sirius was under the sway of The Conscience. 'Oh bloody hell, not this,' James muttered, stepping back lest he be contaminated.

'She was so right. It's a wonder she didn't just smash my face in,' Sirius was continuing. 'I couldn't have blamed her – I deserved it. I still deserve it!'

'You don't deserve to have your face bashed in,' James said with a sigh, resigning himself to uttering platitudes for at least the next ten minutes.

'How could I have been so insensitive?' Sirius asked no one, utterly aghast.

'You are the soul of sensitivity,' James replied rather tonelessly, balancing his elbows on his knees and settling in for the duration.

'I was doing just what I'd said Cross was doing. And I did it first! There I was, staring at her like I was starving and she was breakfast. Who does that? I mean, aside from Rob. What was I thinking?'

'I'm sure she had no idea what you were thinking,' James murmured, ticking through the list of which clothes he could wear again before they really, really needed washing. 'Soul of mystery, you are.'

'I told her not to take it personally,' Sirius was saying, his fingers raking through his hair until it stood on end. 'I told her that I would have felt that way about anyone - that she shouldn't take it personally -'

'Well she shouldn't have taken it persona – wait, you told her what?' James squawked, coming back to the conversation with a lung-crushing jolt. 'What were you thinking?'

'I believe,' Sirius said with impressive dignity, 'that I've just asked that question.'

'But – but – but,' James stuttered.

'And that I subsequently established that I'm an idiot,' Sirius added, kindly not informing James that he looked like a landlocked trout. 'In fact,' he continued, 'I'm fairly certain that I've been explaining that for a while now.'

'Yes, well, I'm sure you haven't explained it nearly enough!' James cried. 'Pads, she caught you lusting after her body, okay? Not just staring, not just perving, but lusting. Have you got any idea how touchy they are about things like that? There are Gringott's vaults under less stringent security measures than girls' no-no places.'

Sirius stared, fighting down a laugh. Now that he'd realised the implications of Ze's comment – and his own culpability in the matter – everything seemed strangely disconnected and really rather amusing. '"No-no places"?' he repeated, trying not to notice the expression of horrified honesty on James's face.

'The places you aren't supposed to know about,' James elaborated, completely missing the sardonic quirk of Sirius's left eyebrow. 'You know, tits, arse – no-no places. Where you can never, never look.'

'James, you perv on Lily all the time.'

'Yes, well, I'm depraved and twisted, everyone knows that. Besides, I'm going to marry her - I'm allowed.'

There was such a sense of righteousness in his tone that Sirius decided not to argue. 'Fair enough, but I still don't see how we're supposed to look at girls and not see their no-no places.'

'Well of course you see them,' James rolled his eyes. 'You just don't ever let them know. It's sort of like telling Kettleburn you couldn't do your homework because your flobberworm's gone on holiday- he knows you've forgot to feed it and it's died and you know you've forgot to feed it and it's died, but as long as no one says anything about it everyone gets what they want.'

Sirius stared at James. 'Do you listen to yourself, when you talk?' he asked. 'Because sometimes I wonder if your mum really didn't find you under a cabbage leaf somewhere.'

James glared. But 'At least I don't get caught staring at girls' no-no places,' was all he could manage as a retort.

'Oh it gets worse than that,' Sirius said on a chuckle that ended in a groan.

'Worse? How can it possibly get worse?'

Sirius thought of Colin The Frog and his own ultra-possessive behaviour and the way he'd bungled the phrase "your sort" and how horribly wrong things had gone from there – from one, innocent little misspoken word. Looking back it all seemed so stupid - the sort of fight that starts with an "I told you" and ends with forty years of frigid silence. There will not be forty years of silence, Sirius promised himself. There won't be another hour of it. 'We had a fight,' he told James, wondering how to explain so that it didn't sound like childish muck. Because really, it had been one of the most horribly vicious experiences of his life. 'A really, really nasty fight.'

'About…' James prompted.

'It started over her date with Colin Cross,' Sirius sighed, leaning back and gathering his thoughts.

'Feeling a wee bit jealous, were we?' James asked wisely.

'Ready to take his head off, more like,' Sirius admitted ruefully. 'And…well, there's more to the story, but I sort of was in on the last of their date –'

'Was this when you went rushing off with Ze?' James interrupted. When Sirius gave him a surprised look he explained: 'Pete said you'd just been about to rescue him from Rosmerta when Ze started pounding on the window and you went running out to meet her. He had no idea what about though, only said that from what he could see between his elbows, she looked dead scared.'

'Scared would be one word,' Sirius murmured, and then shook the daze off. 'It was strange,' he explained. 'Very, very strange, and one thing led to another, and she said that Cross had been her first kiss and I just – I just lost it. Went completely mad. It made me realise, see, that I fancy her rotten, and her telling me that she's just snogged Cross, well…'

'It made you want to find a timeturner and go back half an hour,' James filled in sympathetically.

Sirius's head snapped up. 'Do you think I could? Get at timeturner, I mean? I'd just need a few hours –'

'Sirius,' James soothed, 'It's just an expression - that stuff only ever works in books. Besides, if you go back to before Ze kissed Cross, you might not realise you fancy her for ages.'

'But if I could stop it, then we'd never have this fight –' Sirius said rapidly, already cycling through likely places to find a timeturner. Could they make one? Surely it wouldn't be that hard –

'It would just mean you'd have it later,' James sighed. 'Rows like that, the sort that are about deep-seated anger and insecurity, they always happen. They need to happen. Fights like that are just - they're like adjustments, aren't they? Turning points. You get it all out and then you make up and suddenly you're so much closer than you were. Better to get it done now,' he added sagely.

Sirius stared at him, these unexpected words of wisdom effectively curing him of his time-reversal obsession. 'How do you know what we fought about?'

James merely shrugged. 'I don't – not exactly, at least. But if you're this angry – and you were angry when I found you – it usually means that some of what got said to you is true. Harsh, but true. And that some of what you said to her was true as well. Obviously there are also a lot of things you feel guilty about saying, and things you said to mask what you were feeling, but really, if these were things that were burdening you that significantly, they were going to come out sooner or later. Now that you know what they are, you can work to make sure that they get resolved regularly from here on. Much more beneficial way of doing things.'

'Have you thought of going into therapy as a profession?' Sirius asked wonderingly.

'Not really, but it'll be an option if I don't get asked to play for England at the end of the year,' James grinned, diffusing the compliment with his usual cheeky evasion.

Sirius shook his head. 'You're mental. And I'm fucked.'

'Yes,' James agreed. 'You are.'

Sirius glared. 'I had rather hoped you'd have something more cheerful than that – like, I dunno, some advice?'

James opened his mouth to make a smart comment and thought better of it. He firmly believed that you judged your friends by how deeply the trust between you ran, and if Sirius trusted him to be able to give advice, then he'd bloody well give some. It was just that he couldn't really think of anything good. There was the fact that he'd never been in this situation before – the complete opposite of it was where he usually ended up, trying to convince his love that everything he said was in earnest. And then there was the fact that Sirius had, quite genuinely, damaged his chances with Ze. You just didn't tell a girl that her attractive qualities went only skin deep, and that they were completely interchangeable with those of the rest of the female population. Comments like that were right up there with picking fun at the mentally deficient and slapping little old ladies. They just weren't on.

And usually Sirius had more tact than that. There was something about him, an innate understanding, that allowed him to put girls at ease – when he could get up the gumption to talk to them, of course. Sirius was just that sort, the kind who would have been disgustingly charming if he hadn't been so sincere. That he had so badly bungled the situation with Ze was a massive surprise, not least because Ze herself was so phenomenally straightforward. If she had laughed at Sirius, it meant she had found the situation amusing – with any other girl that laughter would have been cruel, but Ze had probably just thought it honestly funny. And if there was anyone who could understand that the male mind could find almost anything sexually alluring, given the time and desperation, then it was her. So really, of all the girls Sirius could have made his delightful "don't take it personally" comment to, Ze was the kindest option. And if she had thrown it back in his face with a healthy does of ire, well…perhaps that indicated that she wasn't so immune to his charms herself. In James's (admittedly limited) experience with the female psyche, girls tended to be upset with blokes they liked. And whilst Ze had no trouble standing up for herself under ordinary circumstances, James could really only see her dwelling on something Sirius had said if she felt particularly bitter abut the implications.

On the other hand, she had recently gone to incredible lengths to inform the school that, yes, she was in fact a girl, and her anger might have been a lingering bitterness that Sirius had only ever noticed her physical attractions after she'd gone to absurd lengths to make them apparent to everyone else. That isn't Ze's way, his common sense said, and James nodded, trusting his gut. So that meant that Ze most likely did, on some level, return Sirius's interest. Or, she had before they'd had this fight. 'Er…' he began, not sure how willing Sirius would be to talk. 'When you and Ze argued…what…'

'What did we argue about?' Sirius asked quietly.

'Yeah.'

Sirius took a deep breath and slowly expelled it. Somehow, as the air moved through the room the atmosphere- and the conversation - took on a weight that pressed against them, making the chill from the window and the shadows from the torches all the more obvious. 'I was angry because she hinted that she might fancy Cross,' Sirius began, slowly. 'I don't even remember how she phrased it, but I was so upset I just shouted out that the only reason Cross had invited her out was because he thought she was guaranteed.' James winced. 'Yeah,' Sirius nodded with a bitter smile, 'definitely the way to get me into her good books. All I had to do was apologise, of course, but she cut me off and just…just ripped me to pieces.

Said wasn't it nice for me, since she was the one getting called a slag and I was the one getting winked at? The worst part, though, was that she said she'd already known that Cross was probably only asking her out on the chance he'd get off with her – I don't think she really meant it,' he hurried to add. 'I think she was just saying it to piss me off, because she'd never have gone out with him if she thought he was like that. But she must have heard someone say something to that effect, because she definitely wasn't surprised. And that was what made me so angry with her. It was that moment when you're so furious you can't control what's coming out of your mouth. It just spews everywhere and before you know it you've asked the girl you're completely in love with if she was planning on giving the guy she'd been out with something for his troubles, or if she'd wanted to be a tease?'

'Sweet Circe, you didn't,' James breathed.

'Oh but I did,' Sirius murmured. 'Oh but I did. She told me I was jealous – and she was right. But she had the reason wrong. So very, very wrong.' They sat I silence for a long moment with the torchlight flickering on the walls and the sound of rain beginning to rap against the windows. It was a still and heavy silence, and Sirius realised that it had been a long time since he and James had sat like this, together, in the quiet. It had been a frequent fixture of their summer, particularly after Grace's letter had come, and he had felt so completely used. This was a part of James that didn't get shared with many people, a level of introspection that imbued him with the sort of steadiness no one ever credited him for. No one except Dumbledore, that is, and his fellow Marauders. It was the reason James knew all of Sirius's secrets, the reason the two boys, who came from such different backgrounds, felt bonded as deeply as brothers. They both craved the quiet, even if they never shared the desire with anyone else. 'I hate that it hurts,' Sirius said, his voice nearly a whisper. James barely turned his head, but Sirius knew he was listening. 'I hate that I knew I was hurting her, and I couldn't stop.'

'People forgive, Sirius,' James said quietly. 'It just takes time.'

'I've always promised myself that I wouldn't ever hurt someone just because I could…' Sirius murmured. 'But sometimes...'

'You aren't like your parents,' was James's reply, barely louder than the rain. 'You feel guilty, Sirius – there's a difference.'

'Not to Ze,' he pointed out miserably. 'Not unless I can make her believe –'

'Ze isn't a fool, yeah? She isn't unreasonable, and she isn't cruel. I'd wager money that, at this very moment, she's feeling as horrible as you are.'

'It's just that she said – she said –'

'You don't have to tell me,' James said quietly, tucking his elbows on his knees and very kindly not looking at Sirius. 'If it's something that belongs between the two of you, keep it between the two of you.'

'There is no "two of us",' Sirius murmured ruefully.

'Ah, but there might be,' James said with a faint smile. 'There just might be. And think,' he added in a more cheerful voice. 'All you have to do is win the bet.'

'What?' Sirius asked, completely confused.

'You wanted advice?' James asked, suddenly sounding almost gleeful.

'Yeah, well –'

'Well I'm giving you advice. Here it is – listen well. You're going to win the bet. No, let me finish,' James held up a hand, forestalling Sirius's interruption. 'The problem, as you see it, is twofold, right? Firstly, Ze will never believe you're sincere in your admiration for her because she knows that, for some time before you made said admiration known, you've been involved in a wager regarding chastity – a wager of which she knows all the particulars. Secondly, you have to sort out this row. This will mean apologising. It will also mean quite a lot of putting your best foot forward and reminding her that you are all that is good and kind and sensitive and all that rubbish.'

'Yes, but I don't see how –'

'Winning the bet,' James said authoritatively, quieting Sirius right down, 'will prove that you are master of your desires – and hopefully convince Ze that, rather than confessing your love and expecting her to assuage your lust, you're interested primarily in her non-physical attractions.' Here James frowned. 'At some point, you should probably make a list of what those are. At any rate,' he continued briskly, 'the combination of heartfelt apology and triumph over your baser instincts ought to do the trick of convincing her you care.'

'I can apologise all day Prongs, but there is no guarantee I'm going to win the bet!' Sirius cried.

'Of course there is,' James said sensibly. 'You have something to fight for. The rest of us are really just in until we can't take it any more – and really, how much longer do you think we'll last? Pete's wound tight as a bow-string, Moony goes through three decks of cards a day, and Rob is doing something with knives. If nothing else, they'll all disqualify themselves by virtue of grievous bodily injury.'

'Which leaves you, me, and Zeke,' Sirius reminded James.

'Zeke was made to stare soulfully into the eyes of some exotic beauty,' James shrugged. 'I give it another two weeks before he's in love.'

'Two weeks!'

'Alright, one week – I'll look into the exotic beauty supply and see if I can't come up with something.'

'So that's down to me and you,' Sirius said quietly.

'Which means you'll just have to wait until I can't take it any longer, and snog Lily senseless. She'll go into attack mode, and you'll have won the bet. All I ask is that you drag her off me before she blasts my nose off. You know how much Madam Digweed hates that.'

'This is cheating.'

'No, this is strategy. It would only be cheating if we had secret codenames.'

'James, be serious –'

'That's your job,' James quipped. Before Sirius could so much as groan at the overused pun though, James was holding up his hand. 'Look, just think, okay? This will solve your problems with Ze. It will enable you to face her as the man you want to be, and has the added benefit of giving you time to figure out just who that man is. There is, of course, just one caveat.'

'I was wondering when we'd get to this,' Sirius sighed.

'Mm,' James agreed. 'It shouldn't be too bad. You just can't confess that you like her until after you've won the bet.'

'That isn't so – wait - what?'

'Trust me, this is –'

'Have you lost it completely?' Sirius nearly shouted. 'That could take weeks!'

'Well, yes,' James nodded. 'It could.'

'I can't take weeks,' Sirius stuttered. 'I'm ready to collapse now. I want to tell her I'm sorry for all the things I said –'

'Oh you can apologise,' James broke in. 'You just can't tell her you fancy her. That would more or less ruin it.'

'How?' Sirius cried. 'I don't see –'

'How many times do I have to tell you that Ze isn't stupid?' James asked impatiently. 'The point is that she should figure it out for herself, okay? There's nothing more attractive than thinking you've discovered someone's secret, and if she realises that you fancy her, and knows that you're still in the bet, then she's going to know that you aren't into her for a quick fix. And there will be the added benefit that she did all that deductive work on her own. She won't feel as though she's been manipulated and might even make a move on you first…in which case you can, of course, lose the bet and win the war, as it were.'

Sirius pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered when his head had started hurting so badly. 'You're either deranged or a genius.'

'I like to think I'm both.'

'This could actually be brilliant,' Sirius admitted.

'Of course it is.'

'I mean, I don't exactly want to tell her that I fancy her. That's a bit…'

'Girly?' James suggested.

'I was gong to go with "terrifying",' Sirius admitted. 'But yeah.'

'Right, well, that's The Plan then.'

'Right. The Plan.'

James waited for a moment, but Sirius didn't move. 'Er, you thinking about implementing The Plan anytime soon? Because I'd like to grab a bite of supper –'

'Going,' Sirius said, jerking to his feet and stepping forward.

James, congratulating himself on a job well done, rose more slowly, cracking a few joints along the way just for fun. He couldn't wait until his joints cracked on their own – it would mean that he and Lily were in a cottage somewhere in the country, probably with a couple of kids and a wildly overgrown garden. He was just smiling, thinking of rainy nights with fires and books, when Sirius's footsteps came striding back toward him. An image of Lily reading some dusty potions tome was cut short as Sirius's arms caught him round the shoulders and he was lifted completely off his feet. 'Euuguhgpppm.'

Sirius set him down and stepped back. 'Just wanted you to know that,' he said almost shyly.

James blinked rapidly a few times and nodded, not trusting his voice. Then he stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Sirius, rapping him on the back after a moment in the age-old ritual of a man-hug. Stepping back he met Sirius's eyes for a moment, and they both just knew. There was a matching pair of nods, and then they stalked down the corridors in opposite directions, very much like tomcats who've been caught being unpardonably civil.

But they both knew how much it had meant.

A/N: so this chapter is drama drama drama drama. sorry! don't worry though - the maudlin apologies won't last forever, because even i get tired of writing this sort of stuff.

for those of you (clever things) who think that Sirius took too much blame for what happened, please remember that this is Sirius's side of the fight from Sirius's point of view. Ze's up next, so we'll see how we do there.

all of your reviews have been marvellous, and i can't thank you enough for continuing to support the story :)

xx


	28. It Begs the Question

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

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Chapter 28: It Begs the Question

Ze had never much liked the colour yellow.

There was something about it that was just so obnoxiously…cheery. Not all yellows of course – the ones that had the sense to be quiet and mellow were all right, and gold was nice – but there really wasn't anything more maddening in the world that a disgustingly bright, jolly yellow. Which, her subconscious pointed out, is probably why so many people insist on painting spare rooms colours with names like "Dancing Daffodil" and "Brilliant Buttercup". Because, as Ze well knew, a yellow spare room guaranteed that no guest would stay more than two nights – her mother had painted theirs "Shimmering Sunshine" and Gran Meridian hadn't stayed over since. The mad truth of it was that if you sat for long enough in front of a yellow wall, you'd find yourself beaming manically and ending all of your sentences – no matter how devoid of joy - with exclamation points: Life is horrible! I've never felt worse! Sirius is furious with me and I've turned someone into a frog! Gosh, isn't that just super!?

Oh yes – and you'd start using words like "gosh". "Super" would follow closely, and then the dreaded "gee whiz". If you were lucky, you might be able to do yourself in before "golly" and "fabulous" joined the queue and you were fit only for work in a shop selling baby bonnets to jubilant soon-to-be-grannys. This was something else Ze knew all about – well, not really, as she'd never so much as touched a baby bonnet…but the yellow-driving-you-mad bit was more or less down pat. Because, somehow, completely by chance, she had managed to find the one yellow room in Hogwarts Castle. It was at the very, very top of the North Northeast Tower (not to be confused with the South Northeast Tower). And now she was sitting in it, staring. It must, she mused as she glowered at the sunny plaster, be sensible to have a large window in the centre of any yellow wall. That way, when you just couldn't take anymore, you had something handy to throw yourself out of. It was a brilliant idea, really – all you'd have to worry about was hoping the fall was long enough to kill you.

Except the wall she was currently staring at didn't have a window. It was a pity, really, because she was well on her way to the throwing-out-of stage. She could, of course, leave the room – with its insipid yellow paint and positively deranged daisy chain borders – and return to Griffyndor tower. But that would leave her open to all sorts of horrible dangers. Like running into Lily. Or Sirius. Or McGonagall. And if she ran into to Lily she'd have to avoid explaining, and if she ran into Sirius she'd have to have a bit of a breakdown and apologise, and if she ran into McGonagall…well, a conscience was a funny thing, and Ze was beginning to think that the whole awful truth about Colin Cross having spent half an hour as a frog might just come tumbling out before she could stop it. And then she'd end up in prison because the first rule of the magical world was No Frogs, Please – It's Just So Terribly Overdone.

Of course, if she ended up in prison, she'd never have to see Lily or Sirius, which would mean no explanations or apologies or mental breakdowns at all…

…but there would probably not be quidditch in prison, and there certainly wouldn't be pudding.

No, the yellow room was still preferable. And delightfully distracting. Why, you could get so involved in trying to figure out how such a monstrosity had ever been allowed to survive in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts that you'd positively forget about all the troubles plaguing you. One look at those disgusting daisies – yes, they really were daisies, drawn all loopily with little cartoonish grins on their faces – and you'd be convinced the only solution was a flamethrower.

And then, just as you were trying desperately to make yourself feel better by imagining the daisies going up in smoke, you'd recall all the horrible things you'd said to one of your best mates, and the fact that you'd unintentionally turned a boy into a frog with your first kiss, and you'd suddenly find yourself wondering why the human body's automatic response to emotional trauma is reversion to the fetal position, complete with whimpers.

Ze was, currently, on her fifth go-round at curling up like a porcupine, and had discovered that it helped to tuck her head in tightly and hug her knees. The whimpering usually stopped fairly quickly if she did that, and somehow it made it easier to unfold herself afterward. Once she'd managed to straighten herself out she would have to lie on her back in the middle of the horrible "garden illusion" carpet that was woven to look like a well-manicured grassy lawn, calmly telling her muscles that it was alright to relax. All the while she would be doing her best to ignore her brain, which was allowing her internal film projector to play back the entire day in exquisite detail. It was sort of fascinating, actually, as she felt almost no connection with the Ze going through the motions of kissing Colin Cross. It was rather like watching someone else endure the horror and humiliation, and in an odd way it was a bit gratifying. After all, there's nothing like wallowing in a glorious puddle of misery…

She had just got to the part in the story where she was saying some particularly nasty things to Sirius – something about him being jealous, which was absolute rubbish – when her mouth opened of it's own accord and a rather sensible and strident version of her voice said: 'This is boring.'

'Well yes,' she replied. 'It is.'

The film projector gave an indignant jerk and the reel quite suddenly stopped, leaving Ze with a mental freeze-frame of herself mid-diatribe. And it is a fact of life that, aside from Grace Kelly, who could make wallowing in a rubbish heap look elegant, no one looks nice mid-diatribe. Most people don't even look threatening. Freeze someone's face in the middle of delivering a really nasty insult, and you're usually left with a good idea of what they'd look like as a circus clown.

Ze hastily blinked to dispel the image, and pushed herself up onto her elbows. 'What?' she asked the offending daisies, 'is the bloody point?'

Thankfully, the daisies did not answer, but continued to grin with frightening intensity down at her. Which was just fine, as Ze was capable of answering that question all by herself.

Yes, she had made a real cat's breakfast of her first-ever date.

Yes, she had managed to get into an argument – alright, a flaming row – with the person she ought to have been thanking for his help.

And yes, she had wasted an entire afternoon of her life moaning and groaning and wailing "poor me".

And that was quite enough of that. It was time to think. It was time to ponder. It was time to prioritise .

…and maybe it was time to stop spending so much time with Dorcas and Lily. They were clearly having an adverse effect on her organistional prowess, not to mention her vocabulary.

Focus! the strident, dictatorial voice shouted. We have had enough of this, and there are more of Us than there are of You, so just belt up and listen! First, we are going to sort out what the bloody hell happened. Second, we are going to discover why we're snogging people into amph- reptiles. And third, we are going to come up with a way to apologise to Sirius!

There was a brief sound of internal scuffling, ending with the unmistakable ooopmh of someone getting elbowed in the ribs.

Alright, slight change, the voice, somewhat testily, came again. We're going to come up with a way to apologise to Sirius while letting him know that he was extremely hurtful and should apologise too. Happy now?

Ze got the impression that the last bit was intended for some bit of herself that she didn't necessarily speak for, so she just nodded.

Good. Start thinking.

And that, apparently, was that. Of course, me is Me and I am I, so if Me is talking to I then it's still…all…me….and…and THAT is an enormous headache. Right. "What the bloody hell happened?" – we can do that.

It was almost as if one of her professors had set an essay. If Ze had still been nine years old – or perhaps just if she'd had a pencil and paper – she would have drawn up a list, and maybe even decorated it. As it was, she was content to let the bossy bit of her brain take over:

1. What the bloody hell happened?

• What went wrong? Where did it start? How could I have changed it?

2. Why did Colin turn into a Frog?

• No luck on this one. (have strong drink, then try again) ((repeat, if necessary))

3. How to apologise to Sirius?

• Grovel. Weep. Bake cake. Anything

As it was, she merely nodded, folded her legs tailor-style, and got on with it. The "what the bloody hell happened" was surprisingly easy – if she looked at the big picture. She had gone on a date. Life had subsequently gone down the toilet. This was not, she rather hoped, rocket science. If it was, well, the moon was in big trouble.

So, no more dates. Ever. Sounded like heaven.

Next, why did Colin turn into a frog? Because you are the culmination of a million-year-long evolutionary joke, was the response her subconscious immediately produced. Ze nibbled on her lower lip: this was a distinct possibility. But, just to leave herself an opening that didn't involve quite a lot of personal embarrassment and potential future humiliation, she decided to hypothesise that it had had something to do with that garden. She'd never seen it before today, and she'd been going through the village since her third year – and she'd never heard any stories about it, either. On the other hand, the chances that people had routinely been turned into random members of the animal kingdom whilst snogging by the fountain and never told anyone about it seemed rather slim – almost as slim as the chance that she and Colin were the first people to stumble through the gates…Which brought Ze back to the fact that she might actually be some sort of evolutionary joke…

Right, so, there was likely something wrong with the place as opposed to the people. After all, the garden had occupied a lot more space than there had been space to occupy, so it probably hadn't belonged to just any old grandmother. The old bat that designed it was probably cackling delightedly somewhere, chortling over how those silly kids got a right good scare. Ze spared a moment to hope there was hellfire licking at her toes as she laughed. A few more minutes spent in serious academic perusal of the question left Ze glowering balefully at the daisies and longing for a window again, so she abandoned the subject in the hopes that an answer would simply Appear.

And that left her with Sirius and apologies to think about.

Which made her groan. Because, for all that she had left it until last on her list, this was the thing that was most important. She'd been an unforgivably stroppy old cow. She'd called him jealous, which he never in a thousand years would be. And she'd as good as told him she never wanted to speak with him again, which was such a disgusting lie it was a wonder lighting hadn't struck her dead as she uttered it. Not that she wasn't angry with him. She was – furious, actually. Furious at him for saying out loud exactly what everyone else seemed to be thinking. Furious at him for getting angry with her when she'd stupidly decided to pick a fight. And more than anything, she was furious at herself. Because, of course, none of those reasons for being angry with Sirius were reasons at all – they were just excuses. She'd gone along with Colin knowing that she didn't wildly fancy him and – if she were being honest - knowing that there would probably be talk about his reasons for going out with her. If life were perfect – hell, if life were one of Serena's silly novels – her first date would have been with some gorgeous bloke she was absolutely mad over. But then, if life were perfect, Ze herself would probably be a bit better suited for going out on dates. She wouldn't have insisted on wearing old jeans and a grubby jumper - she would have been able to put on her own make-up.

But life wasn't perfect. It wasn't even charmingly bizarre. Life was hard, and Ze was coming to realise that if you wanted things to be a certain way you had a lot of work to do, and a lot of wishes to make. Which was probably why she had decided that it would be better to at least have the experience of once having been out with a boy – even one she wasn't terribly keen on – than to never have the experience at all. If nothing else, having a date with Colin Cross had gotten her a hens night with Lily and Dorcas and Serena – and it was looking as though that might be the only bright spot in the whole bloody mess.

But how did she fix it?

Not running Colin off – she had a feeling there was no fixing that – but Sirius? She had no experience with this. She and Jack had never rowed, not about anything more important than which squad would win at the weekend, or who was going to do the washing up. With Clive it had always been the same – and now that he was avoiding her, she supposed she couldn't even ask him for a bit of advice…even if he'd been able to offer any. In fact, she rather doubted any of the guys would. Because this wouldn't be fixed by a handshake and a pat on the back. There was no bloke-to-bloke "no worries, load of rubbish" moment that was going to get past the stuff they'd said to one another. A punch-up might have done it, but even that would have been a stretch. So an apology it would be. An apology somehow expressing that, while she was aware she'd been an irrational cow, he hadn't been much better.

Which, to Ze, sounded like the start of another fight. But that small voice in the back of her head was refusing to give up: she might be the one with more to apologise for, but she wasn't the only one who'd been unnecessarily vicious. Not that she was planning on demanding grovelling or tears – she would settle for a mumbled "I might've been a bit harsh" and a lopsided shrug. Not that she was likely to get it, after the way she'd behaved. It would serve her right if he really did refuse to ever speak to her again… With a sigh she flopped backwards again, stretching out onto the carpet and glowering at the ceiling – which was, of course, painted pale blue with fluffy clouds on. A disgustingly jolly bluebird darted between two of the clouds, and Ze wished for a rock before she'd reminded herself that it was really just a painting.

What was she going to say?

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius had no idea what he was going to say.

No idea at all. In fact, that was why he was pacing back and forth (no easy feat, given the missing bit of floor) at the bottom of the staircase of the North Northeast Tower. So far he'd only had to pull himself out of the hole – presumably made for drainage rather than aesthetic reasons – in the centre of the floor twice, and he'd been there for nearly an hour. The odds weren't that shabby. Finding Ze hadn't been difficult. Finding someone when you had the Marauder's Map was never difficult. It was just a great pity the Map could only tell you the magic words for opening passages and hidden rooms…

Sirius suspected that he was going to need some seriously magic words when he finally got up to Ze. In fact, if he waited long enough, maybe she'd just come down to him. This wasn't an area of the castle Sirius had spent much time – mind the hole! – in, but given the statuary he'd passed on his way up, he couldn't say he was eager to linger. Get in, get the girl, get out.

Open eye, insert finger, he thought with a snort. If that didn't read like a stupid love poem, he didn't know what did. Not that love poems were bad – it was just that they were repetitive. See girl, fall in love, talk to girl, get rebuffed, rescue girl, earn her love, brown off girl, say you're sorry, kill dragon…earn her love? Something about that didn't seem quite right…The end. Of course, Ze wasn't being held prisoner by a dragon. And if she were, she'd probably have killed and gutted it by now, and would be down in the castle kitchens frying up dragon steaks for everyone by the time he got there… a fact that left Sirius completely fucked, as killing the dragon was always the pathway to the maiden's heart.

The first time, anyway. Then you had to have a blazing row and go off in a huff and then come back and say you were sorry…

'I'm sorry,' Sirius said to the air. 'I'm sorry,' he repeated to the hole. 'That sounds rather nice. "I'm sorry".' He cleared his throat. '"Ze, I'm sorry".' He looked at the door before him in complete shock. 'You know, this could work…'

By the time he was at the top of the stairs, he'd discovered that "I'm really sorry" sounded even better.

*.*.*.*.*

'Sirius, I'm sorry,' Ze said aloud, practising the tone to get it just right. 'Quite sorry, actually, that I said…that I said…oh bugger,' she muttered, turning in a circle. Once she'd snarled a few more curses she turned back around and tried again. 'Sirius,' she said, quite seriously, to the door. 'I'm sorry.'

'I am too,' the door said back.

Ze had one of those horrible moments where the entire world goes pearshaped and you lean over to whisper "did that really just happen?" in your own ear.

'Sorry,' Sirius repeated apologetically, opening the door and popping his head into the room. 'Didn't mean to startle you.'

Ze briefly wondered if this was what cardiac arrest felt like.

'I just, er, heard you, ah – I was coming up the stairs,' he finished, stepping into the room and coming to a standstill. She gaped at him. And then he shuffled his feet. Actually shuffled his feet. And did one of those hesitant little coughs that always manage to sound like an apology no matter when they happen.

'I'm sorry,' she blurted out. 'About today. I'm really, really sorry.'

'Me too,' he said sheepishly. 'I mean, that's exactly what I was going to say, but you sort of, ah, stole it…the really. You stole the "really". I was going to be "really" sorry.' He swallowed: she was looking confused. Or was that sceptical? This definitely wasn't going as planned. She was supposed to be sighing deeply and cradling him to her bosom by now. 'I am really sorry,' he managed to choke out.

'I don't think you're a self-centred bastard and there's no one in the world who's a better friend and I know you're not jealous,' she burst out. 'I mean, you were a bit rude, of course, but-'

'You're brilliant and I was horrible and I didn't mean any of it,' Sirius was babbling at the same time. 'Well, maybe the bit about Cross being a tosser. But he is, so – '

'- so stupid and angry with myself and it just came out - I'm a complete idiot and I just – I just -' Ze came to a sudden stop, chewing on her lip and staring forlornly at the carpet, which, Sirius noticed for the first time, looked horribly like grass.

'Ah…' Sirius wracked his brain. He'd never been much good at girls crying, and while there were no tears yet he would rather gnaw through his own leg than have them arrive. 'Look, I should never have said that Cross was only out with you because he thought you'd be easy. Anyone who's talked to you for three seconds knows that isn't true, and Cross –' he cleared his throat, trying to sound less strangled. 'Cross – Cross isn't - ' he actually choked this time, but somehow managed to force it out. 'Cross isn't stupid! Right, he isn't stupid, not completely,' he couldn't stop from adding in a growl. 'So he must have known. Which means he didn't ask you just for – you know.'

Ze's eye's came up to his, enormous and full of some indefinable emotion, and Sirius had a sudden and rather irrational fear that this Wasn't Working. He was trying his best and she looked ready to fling herself off a cliff. His brain was scrambling madly like a hamster on an exercise wheel, and suddenly he had an image of a knight kneeling before a maiden, sword symbolically laid at her feet, and before he could think he'd thrown himself onto the horrible carpet and grabbed her hands. 'I'm stupid, everything I said was stupid, I'm an idiot and shouldn't be allowed to live,' he said fervently. And then he threw himself forward to hug her round the waist.

'Sirius!' she squawked. 'What are you doing?'

'Apologising?' he suggested hopefully, his voice somewhat muffled as his head was buried in her jumper, his nose tickling her rather awkwardly in the navel.

Ze, who had thrown her hands up in surprise when he'd lunged at her, let them fall. It was, again, awkward, because there was nowhere they could safely rest. One fluttered nervously before landing on his shoulder, and the other refused to listen to her brain and settled quite smugly on his hair. Her fingers slid lightly through the strands, slipping down to curve one lock around his ear. 'This is wrong,' she sighed, watching her fingertip trail through the ends of his hair before falling to his shoulder.

Sirius's head tipped up, his chin resting on her stomach, his eyes wide and dark as soot, and somehow horribly horribly sad. 'You're not accepting?' he asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.

'No!' she cried. 'No! How could I not – I - I – ahm… you shouldn't be kneeling in front of me, right?' She could feel her cheeks heating in a blush as he stared up at her.

But instead of standing, he just gave a faint shrug and said: 'Okay.' And then he jerked her forward and caught her as she tumbled down toward the carpet. Or, at least, that was what he had hoped would happen. In reality it wasn't graceful or even the least bit romantic. Instinctively Ze tried to keep her balance, putting up more resistance than he'd counted on; he came off his own balance and ended up tumbling backward, dragging her with him so that they landed in a contorted sprawl, her left elbow edging him quite pointily in the sternum. 'Ouch,' he tried to say discreetly, but it was rather difficult as his knees were somewhere under her back. 'That didn't quite work like I expected it to,' he admitted, rubbing the back of his head.

'You pulled me over – precisely how was it supposed to "work"?' she asked, trying to make her voice peevish but unable to keep the laughter out.

'I'll have you know that that manoeuvre was designed to sweep you off your feet,' he sniffed.

'Good to know you accomplished your goal,' she said wryly, trying to push herself into a sitting position.

But Sirius wasn't interested in either of them standing back up just yet. With a sigh he slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her back down so that they were lying side by side, no longer entwined but touching ever so lightly as they stared up at the ceiling. 'Let's just have a moment, shall we?' he whispered.

Ze realised she wasn't even a little opposed to this, and nodded, ignoring the way the carpet rubbed against her hair. 'Yeah,' she said softly, shifting slightly so that her neck was resting just over Sirius's arm. 'Let's.'

They were silent for several moments, trying to get their breath – both literal and proverbial – back. Finally, when he thought he could make it sensible, Sirius said, 'I really am sorry. And I would say let's forget about it, but I don't think we can.' Ze remained silent, waiting for him to finish. She felt his chest inflate with a deep breath, heard the air rush out of his lungs. 'I know you're not a tease, and I don't think Colin Cross asked you out because he wanted sex. You're lovely, and he fancies you and I'm sorry things turned out the way they did.' He swallowed, trying to get rid of the catch that had come into his voice as he'd said that last bit. 'If you fancy him back, you could probably –'

'I don't.'

'What?' Sirius asked, turning to face her before he'd thought about it.

'I don't fancy him,' she repeated, this time accompanied by a faint shrug, her shoulders pressing against his arm for a moment. 'And,' she added wryly, 'if you caught him up and asked, I doubt he'd say he fancies me either.'

There was enough truth in this that Sirius just couldn't argue. At last he ventured, 'I should have let you tell him what had happened. I'm sorry I kept talking over you.'

'I have got a voice, Sirius,' Ze said, sounding both bitter and amused. 'If I'd wanted to tell him badly enough, I'd have done it regardless of how loud you were shouting. But I was afraid…I dunno know what I was afraid of. Sounding completely mad, I guess. Stupid of me, really, considering how it's turned out.' The silence descended again, and Ze let her thoughts churn up in her head. They were strangely lucid, and she rather thought this had something to do with the fact that Sirius was lying silently beside her, just waiting. 'I know you don't like people gossiping about you,' she said at last. 'I should never have said that about you not minding rumours about us because they make you look cool – you're the last person who would ever think that. And you're the last person who would ever tolerate someone slagging off one of your friends.'

Sirius shifted slightly, uncomfortable. 'It's my fault that people say all that stuff though – if we'd been a bit more careful with –'

'With the underpants I took off and gave you without bothering to ask what you were going to do with them?' Ze finished archly. 'Come on Sirius – on the All World list of Top Ten Stupidest Things A Girl's Ever Done, that must rank at about Number Three.'

The humour far outweighed the bitterness this time, and Sirius felt it safe to joke back. 'Right before Going On A Date With Rob?' he guessed.

'And right after Getting A Brasilian Bikini Wax,' Ze nodded. 'Well done you.'

'It's a list I'm familiar with,' he shrugged with a credible sigh. 'I'm Number Seven.'

'So that's why all the girls say you're top ten in bed,' Ze laughed. 'And here was me thinking it was a good thing.'

'I never said I was bad,' he shot back. 'Just stupid.'

'Given the findings of the research pool, it more or less works out to the same thing,' Ze replied loftily, sticking her chin a bit higher into the air.

This positively had Sirius rolling onto his side to stare. 'Research pool?' he repeated incredulously. 'Exactly whose "research" are we talking about?'

Ze's face had gone a very satisfying shade of crimson. 'That is none of your business.'

'Oh yes it is, Miss Had Her First Kiss Today,' Sirius cried, grabbing her arm to keep her from getting up.

'Are you going to rub that one in forever then?' she snapped.

'I'm not picking at you,' he soothed. 'I'm just making a point. Unless you've managed to get up to some rather naughty things without doing any kissing, of course,' he added with a waggle of his brows.

She rolled her eyes, but settled back down and folded her arms mutinously over her chest. 'You know I haven't. And it still isn't any of your business.'

'I beg to differ –you've insulted my manhood!'

The glance Ze shot him was positively insulted. 'Your "manhood"? Do you have any idea how disgustingly easy that one is to make into a joke?'

'So you're not going to tell me then?' he asked.

This time she actually rolled her eyes. 'Of course not.'

'Right, well, you asked for it,' he replied gleefully.

And Ze knew.

She had roughly one one-thousandth of a second to prepare, and then it was on: the most violent, vicious, dangerous wrestling match of her life. Sirius had the advantage of having started out on top, but Ze wasn't about to give up because she knew that if she let him get her hands above her head then her knickers were as good as full of ice. It was a game invented – unsurprisingly – by James and Sirius, and generally known as Icy Arse or, alternatively, Freeze Your Bollocks Off. No warning was required to begin a match, and it only ended when one person pinned the other's hands above his (or her) head and performed the dreaded conglacio vestis hex…at which point the loser got that awful feeling that she was about to take a chill. There were no fouls and no penalties, and you could do anything short of biting your opponent to win. The biting used to be legal, but then James had stepped in front of that Nibbling Nasties Hex and Remus had objected on the grounds of the newly-sprouted fangs.

As it was, Ze was wishing that Remus hadn't been quite so picky: sinking her teeth into Sirius's shoulder – or anything else she could reach – seemed like a brilliant idea. He had one wrist and was fighting for the other, but she wasn't about to give up. Hooking her knee round his shoulder she gave a heave and toppled them over, upsetting his grip and letting out of shout of triumph. It was short-lived, however, as he jerked her leg upward with a mighty grunt and sent them sprawling once more. A laughing, shouting scrabble ensued, and Ze very nearly had a victory when she employed one of James's signature moves, the Incensed Stoat By Moonlight. At the last minute Sirius countered with the only possible defence – a very clever Grasshopper Dancing the Tango headlock – and suddenly Ze was flat on her back with her wrists above her head and the sort of gooseflesh that should never, ever be found on one's bum.

'Yield!' she shrieked. 'Yield! For fuck's sake - cold -'

Laughing, Sirius rolled off of her and watched as she sprang to her feet and danced around, bits of ice cascading out of the legs of her trousers. She was cursing and snarling and he finally took pity on her, managing to get the counter-curse out between guffaws. Moments later he was hit by a flying ball of very irate Ze.

'I've gone numb!' she shouted, landing on his chest and sending him sprawling as she attempted to shoved a handful of ice down his shirt. 'Completely bloody numb you bastard –'

Too much of a male not to take the opportunity presented, he wrapped both hands round her bottom and squeezed. 'You're just a bit chilly,' he began cheekily –

'Chilly my arse,' Ze snarled, too distracted by finally succeeded in getting the ice down his front to notice where his hands were - even if the bits in question hadn't been numb.

'Aggh!' he shouted as a fair-sized chip of ice, already a bit melted and trailing frigid water, snaked down his chest. 'That's fucking freezing!' His hands were already off her bum and scrabbling at his neckline when she raised her wand and with a swish vanished the ice.

'Serves you right,' she muttered as he gave his jumper one last desperate shake. 'Not even a bit fair –'

'You've still got to tell me!' he cried, recalling what they'd been fighting over now that he wasn't going hypothermic.

'That is not –' she began hotly.

'Fair's for nancies,' he shot back before she could finish. 'Grow up or go home.'

She glared for a long minute, and he grinned. Finally, with a huff, she folded her arms over her chest and said, 'Alright, but you've got to promise you won't tell anyone else.'

'Oh come off it –'

'I want a promise,' Ze said smartly. 'A real promise,' she added with a narrow look. 'No crossed fingers, toes, or internal organs. Or eyes.'

'Awww,' Sirius whined, but she stared him down. 'Alright,' he finally sighed. 'I promise.' Her eyes narrowed a fraction more; Sirius groaned, but obliged 'I promise that you are the only person to whom I shall acknowledge, in whole or in part, that this conversation ever happened,' he recited in a bored voice. 'Satisfied?'

Ze played it over in her head, lips pursed. 'And that you will not repeat, infer, or hint at – in whole or in part – what is said to anyone else but me?'

Sirius grinned. 'Oh you're good.'

'And don't you ever forget it,' she replied with a smirk.

Sirius's mouth went dry, and he suddenly decided that folding his knees up was a very good idea. 'You were saying?' he managed to get out.

The grin faded and she sighed. 'It really isn't anything you want to hear, yeah? I mean, this is hardly the sort of stuff –'

'Just spit it out.'

She went back to glaring. 'Fine,' she said at last. 'I was recently party to a discussion where it was suggested that there's not much point in getting off with a bloke our age because the experience isn't worth the effort.'

Sirius's mouth sagged open. Ze smirked. It was a full thirty seconds before he could form words, and when he did it was only to say, 'Wh-wh-what?'

'Do I really need to repeat myself?' she asked archly.

'But that – that – that –'

'That isn't very complementary to you,' she finished with a sigh. 'I told you it wasn't anything you wanted to hear.'

'Who told you that?!' he finally exploded.

Ze sighed again and dropped onto the carpet. 'We were talking the other night – Lily and Serena and Dorcas and I.'

'Lily?' Sirius gasped. 'You mean Lily -'

'No, it was all me and Dorcas,' Ze snapped with a roll of her eyes. 'Just because Lily isn't dying to have a go at James doesn't mean she can't have a bit of fun with someone else.' Sirius stared, horrified. 'Not that she has,' Ze added with, yet another, sigh. 'She hasn't found anyone "worth it" yet. Hence Serena sharing her theory that boys our age don't know what they're doing and can't be arsed to learn.'

'That is horribly unfair,' Sirius said indignantly, completely forgetting his previous opinions on fairness.

'But, alas, probably true,' Ze shrugged. 'The general consensus was that, if boys could be persuaded to take a bit of direction – ergo, to use their brains - everyone might have a better time.'

'And she's just telling people this?' Sirius asked, aghast, clearly not having heard a word Ze had said past "can't be arsed to learn".

'Sirius, she hasn't shagged you,' Ze pointed out patiently. 'You can't take these things personally.'

'But she's not saying it personally, is she?' he cried hotly. 'She's saying we're all rubbish! And what's she mean, "take direction" – it isn't a bloody ballet performance you know!'

'Actually, I don't know,' Ze said drily, 'but I'm happy to take your word for it. And it wasn't Serena who suggested that you lot learn to take advice – that was actually Lily. Seems like a good idea to me though. I mean, what's the point in hosting the party if you're not going to have a nice time?'

'Host the party? Host the party? Do you even know what goes on?'

'Believe it or not, my mum did have the "where babies come from" chat with me a long time ago Sirius. I'm not expecting a stork to pop in and finish the job, if that's what's got you worried.'

'What's a stork got to do with it?' Sirius snapped. 'And why were you talking about how bad shagging is? I thought you were supposed to giggle and brush one another's hair and practise French kissing!'

Ze's expression was one of unequivocal disgust. 'What sort of nights in do you have? Brush one another's hair? Yurgfh.'

'So that isn't…what happens?'

'Er, no.'

'Rob and his bloody bananas,' Sirius muttered balefully.

'What have bananas got to do with it?'

'Believe me, you do not want to know,' was the fervent reply. 'Although you could probably ask Serena,' he added nastily, before he could stop himself.

A moment later Ze's eyes went wide with realisation, and she jabbed a finger into his chest. 'You take that back Sirius Black – you do not get to call her a slag!'

'Ouch! I didn't –'

'Oh yes you bloody well did! And as you're the one who's mind is in the bog, you can just stop acting so high and mighty.'

'My mind is not in the bog!'

'You thought we were snogging one another and performing oral sex on tropical fruit!' she practically shouted. 'How is that not dirty?'

Sirius squirmed a bit. 'Sorry?' he finally offered.

'You'd bloody well better be,' she said darkly. 'Thinking I'd go to the trouble for a banana.'

Sirius nearly choked on nothing. Do not think about it! Do not thinking about it! he chanted to himself. In fact, he was so busy trying not to think about Ze that he practically forgot she was in the room.

The silence stretched on for ages while he repeated his little mantra, and if Sirius had been in any condition to monitor Ze's expression, he would have seen that she was in very deep thought indeed. But he was too busy trying to conjure up images of icy water and Peter in a tutu to wonder what was drawing a line between Ze's brows. And when she finally did speak it was on a topic so far from what he was thinking that it took two repetitions of her question before he even realised she was talking.

'Wh-what?' he mumbled, blinking at her. 'Sorry,' he added when her face came into focus and he registered the decidedly uncomfortably expression on her face. 'I was, um, having a think. What did you ask?'

'Er, earlier today, when you were saying, ah…about me snogging Colin and him turning into a- a frog,' she garbled, swallowing nervously. 'When you said you weren't surprised it had happened to "my sort". Um, what…what exactly did you mean?'

'Mean?' he repeated stupidly.

'When you said "your sort". About me. What's my sort?' She was twining her fingers nervously together, and he quite suddenly realised that this was much more important than a simple question and tried desperately to get his head around it.

'Ahhhm…' You've really got to do it right this time, he reminded himself urgently. You cannot stuff it up again! 'I'm not sure what the proper name is, see, or if there even is one…' Because it really doesn't matter and no one cares about silly superstitions anyway… 'But, well, see – and I'm not sure about this, because it's just stupid stories, right? And –' he broke off, because Ze was staring at him very oddly. 'I just meant your family, okay? Your sort – what I meant when I said "sort" was your family.'

Ze was very definitely looking lost now. 'My…family?'

'You know,' he said quickly, 'Meridians.' Her expression showed no hint of understanding. 'You must know,' he repeated, feeling a touch nervous. 'You're one of them. The Good People. The faerie folk.'

A/N: how's that for a cliffhanger? and you'd thought there wasn't another cliche i could shamelessly exploit... this one doesn't have quite the range some of the others have, but i couldn't leave the notion of "special powers" alone - it's just too much fun!

just a quick "thanks" for all the lovely reviews - couldn't do it without them! and as always thanks for reading!


	29. So the Story Goes

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

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Chapter 29: So the Story Goes

'You know,' he said quickly, 'Meridians.' Her expression showed no hint of understanding. 'You must know,' he repeated, feeling slightly nervous. 'You're one of them. The Good People. The fairy folk.'

Ze just stared at him.

Sirius began to feel rather silly – after all, he'd just said "fairy folk" – so he struggled to explain. 'They're th-the' he stuttered 'the people that, ahm, the people – look, you've got to know,' he repeated impatiently when she continued to look positively lost. 'Meridians, Le Feys, Goodfellows – there must be ten different lines of- of - '

'Of what?' Ze asked, looking ready to pull his ears off if he didn't give her an answer.

'Of humans who are kin to the fairies!'

For a long moment Ze just stared at him, her expression one of utter confusion. And then she began to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. And there is nothing - nothing - more painful for a boy in love than being laughed at. 'What?' he spluttered. 'What is so –'

'The fairies?' she guffawed. 'Sirius, you're mad! Fairies?'

'Look, I'm telling you the truth!' he cried, feeling more than faintly piqued at this disregard for his opinion. 'The surname Meridian traditionally means that somewhere along the line someone was originally from the Other Side,' he said impatiently. Ze just giggled.

And, quite obviously, this just made him stroppier. 'Fairyland, Shangri-La, the Sidhe Court – whatever the hell you want to call it! The place where your lot come from,' he added snidely.

'Oh come on – Sirius, I've seen pixies, and we've got absolutely nothing in common!'

'I'm not talking about pixies, am I?' he cried, vaguely aware that his hands were beginning to wave around madly of their own accord. 'I'm talking about creepy little fairy buggers, and trust me when I say it is not the same thing! Pixies might be nice and cute, but – well – the other… Look, mostly they just get pissed and take a wrong turning at the Mystic Borders or whatever they're called. Used to happen all the time a few hundred years ago – some sort of war going on in their – their lands or whatever. Heaps of them crossed over into the English countryside and all sorts of weird things started happening.'

'What,' Ze asked mockingly, 'girls start singing songs to furry woodland creatures and wearing glass shoes?'

'That is not –' Sirius began, stopping only when he realised that she was taking the piss. 'You're mockng me,' he said, and she grinned.

'You're telling stories about fairies – what else should I be doing?'

'You could believe me! This isn't a joke, Zaz!' he cried, and somewhere in the back of his head he was distinctly aware that this was not how it was supposed to be going. There was a logic to these things: he had apologised, she had apologised…and now he was supposed to refrain from confessing his love in verse for the ten seconds it took her to realise that she was in love with him just as much as he was in love with her. Then it was all over but the recitation of the sonnet and the tearing off of clothes. Unfortunately, Fate hadn't quite read the directions. Which was, Sirius decided, why his stupid tongue was still forming words like: 'If you ever paid attention in History of Magic - well, alright, if Binns ever talked about anything besides goblins – you'd know that the Faerie Wars actually happened.'

'Faerie Wars? There's something called the Faerie Wars?' Ze asked incredulously, clearly not having got the script changes in regards to "I love you – take me now". 'How has Rob missed that? Lucky us though, or we'd be up to our ears in jokes about poofters boxing.'

Somewhere in a lightly padded mental corner, Sir Sirius the Not-so-Chivalrous was sucking his thumb and crying softly. 'I am being serious!' his shamefully unfeeling alter-ego cried. 'Now don't you even think about it,' he snarled when she opened her mouth to make the pun.

'So what happened, Oh Wise One?' she asked, settling back, still grinning, with no idea of the damage she was doing. 'How did the Faerie Wars end?'

Sirius, locked in heated battle with the bit of himself that had, apparently, got out the rhyming dictionary and started on the ode, was valiantly opposing the use of the word "quivering" in the third stanza and allowed his Educated Mind to reply without restraint. 'No idea. Don't think anyone really cares, 'cos it was about the time Merlin and King Arthur and all that was happening, and we had our own problems. Not the least of them, of course, being a lot of bastards with pointy ears and funny powers running around. And they weren't just looking to spend a few years avoiding the violence – they started settling in. Not down, mind you, just in. It was complete madness - half-breeds started cropping up everywhere, and before we knew it we were dealing with pucks and bards and soppy dead women sailing down rivers in rowboats –'

'Sirius,' Ze interrupted, trying to keep her voice steady despite the overwhelming urge to laugh.

'And the Muggles were getting a bit suspicious and starting to eye the pitchforks and burning pyres –'

'Sirius,' Ze tried again, feeling almost guilty for cutting him off as he looked so, well, serious. Particularly for someone talking complete bollocks.

'Of course, random giants stopping you at a crossroads and pulling your head off will do that to a person –'

'Sirius!' Ze shouted. This shut him right up. But Ze wasn't taking any chances: she leaned in and established eye contact, making sure his pupils were a normal size. Five centimetres from his face she thought she might have heard several small, tinny voices shouting war cries, underwritten by a distinctly bellicose lyre riff, but hastily decided that this just wasn't possible. And Sirius looked like he always did…which, she realised with faint puzzlement, was a little to the side of normal. But, aside from that slightly feverish cast to his face, she was mostly sure he wasn't insane or drunk, so she spoke. 'Look, I'm sure that everything you're saying is true, and that there're loads of… fairypeople… whatevers out there. But I didn't get the name Meridian from the magical side of the family. I'm a witch 'cos of my mum, and seeing as she's Persian I doubt she's got any English fairy in her. It's my dad that's called Meridian, and trust me when I say that he hasn't got a magical bone in his body – if he had, Chelsea football club would be doing a right sight better.'

'You're not listening,' Sirius said impatiently, his hands waving around in a decidedly lunatic fashion. 'They weren't just going to bed with witches and wizards – they'd shag bloody well anything. There were probably sheep that were half fairy running 'round.'

There was a long moment of silence.

'Ugh,' said Ze.

'Exactly,' said Sirius, who had by now more or less quashed the Lyrical Rebellion and was hastily restoring order in his internal kingdom. 'Not that they were all bad,' he hastened to add, suddenly remembering that he was trying to convince Ze that she was related to these creatures. 'Some of them were, er, quite nice. I think. Apart from pinching anything that wasn't nailed down and seducing girls in wooded glades. But they were definitely very good-looking,' he said desperately, sensing that he while he might have won the battle with himself, he was definitely losing this one. 'Anyway, the point is that there were as many muggles as there were witches and wizard's having it off with them. And when the kids started coming along the muggle babies were just as much trouble as the magical ones.

Being part fey doesn't mean you're automatically a witch or a wizard, see – it's a completely different sort of magic. So you'd got people that had the sort of magic you found in our world, and people that had the sort of magic you found in their world, and then you had people that had it from both worlds…which basically means you had a great heap of trouble. 'Cos their magic isn't like ours – it isn't wands and spells and things you can predict. It comes from nature and the moon and weird, strange stuff that we don't understand. It's the wild sort. The sort that makes…' he threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation. 'The sort that makes things happen just because, like wishes or shooting stars…or turning guys into frogs because they aren't right for the person kissing them,' he added, feeling suddenly inspired.

There was a prolonged moment of silence: Ze's head was turned on one side and she was chewing at her lip. Sirius smiled dreamily at the adorable picture she made, fighting down the urge to lovingly stroke the hair off her brow. Aside from the fact that Ze would probably think he'd gone mad and punch him, he had a feeling the hair would just fall right back forward. Not that he would mind. He liked her hair. And her face. And her –

'Rubbish.'

There was a definite sound of mental brakes screeching: had he been talking out loud? 'Wha- what?'

'This,' Ze said impatiently, waving her hand around to encompass, presumably, the air, the carpet, and their entire conversation. 'No offence,' she added quickly, 'I really appreciate you trying to make me feel better, but well…if all this was true, don't you think someone would have told me by now? I mean, it isn't exactly common, is it - the name Meridian? And if "everybody" knows, wouldn't someone have said something to give me a hint in the past six years?'

'Weeelll,' Sirius hedged, loathe to agree that she did have a point. 'To be honest,' he finally admitted, 'I'd never really given it much thought until today. Knowing someone who's still got one of the names is pretty rare I guess – I mean, you don't run into too many Robin Goodfellows – but it isn't completely odd. Most people have got a bit of fey blood somewhere up the family tree – my mum's dead proud that she can trace herself all the way back to Morgan Le Fey.'

Ze gave him a surreptitious glance out of the corner of her eye. 'Er…isn't she that one that killed Merlin?' she asked hesitantly.

'Oh yeah,' Sirius nodded. 'Very antidisestablishmentarianist, my mum. Comes from a long line of cold-blooded killers.'

Ze digested this for a moment and decided that perhaps it was better not to comment.

'I'm joking,' Sirius assured her. 'Sort of. Anyway, my point being that it's hardly anything to get worked up about. You're probably descended from some lovely flower fairy or something – maybe a nice nature sprite.'

'A nature sprite?' Ze sneered with a curl of her lip.

'Well I doubt it was a lamia, seeing as you've never tried to eat anyone…Have you?' he asked a moment later, a touch nervously.

Ze spared him a distinctly unimpressed glance and went back to mulling it all over in her head. 'And you actually think…' she finally managed to say.

'That maybe you've got some wicked secret powers tucked away, just waiting for the right time to show up?' he grinned, full of cheek. ''Course I do.'

Ze snorted, not a little bitterly, and shook her head. 'No offence, but I'm not sure I quite believe you. It just seems a bit, well, ridiculous, yeah? The sort of thing that only happens in stupid novels.'

'I dunno, most of the things that happen in stupid novels happen in real life – mistaken identities, murderous intrigue, true love…' Sirius glanced over to see how Ze felt about this, but she was too busy gnawing on her lower lip to pay him any mind.

In a way, he was relieved. All sorts of things were churning around in his stomach, and most of them had nothing to with lunch. If he'd been slightly less squeamish (and slightly better at spelling) he might have labelled them things like "effervescent amour" and "nervous tingling of the heart". Oh, all right, and "burning passion infused with hunger pangs" and probably a wee bit of "hasn't eaten anything since breakfast" too. But really, if he was going to continue to resist Ze's manifold charms he needed sustenance. Preferably in the form of half a roast pig…perhaps with a few potatoes on the side. And he did need to resist Ze's charms, no matter what that sneaky bastard with the lyre in his head kept telling him. There were reasons. There was logic. There was a Plan. And if being a Marauder had taught him nothing else, it was that you stuck to the Plan.

So if not kissing Ze today made kissing her at some nebulous point in the future more possible, he would hold out. In the name of honour and dignity and – and – well, there had to be something else. Things like honour and dignity always came in threes. Of course, they also usually came in particularly pedantic lectures from authority figures, and by the time they'd got round to Number Three on the list of Thou Shouldsts, Sirius was usually off with the fairies. Funny, that, off with the fairies…off with Ze…

'They'd have books on all this fairy business in the library, wouldn't they?' Ze asked in a thoughtful voice. Sirius, completely lost in his own private world, just nodded absently, because a rather important thought was coming in…

Perseverance. In the name of honour and dignity and perseverance. Ha!

And that was another thirty seconds passed without shoving Ze up against the wall and going at her. Really, he was onto something with this time management bit. What if he hugged her, though? Not kissed – there would be no kissing – but just hugged. And maybe pulled her around so that she was lying against his chest with her head just under his chin. She would fit perfectly; he already knew that, the same way he knew his sleeves would hang endearingly down over her hands when he loaned her his coat on chilly evenings, or that his clothes would smell faintly of cinnamon after she'd hugged him. Ze probably knew these things as well, and just hadn't realised it yet. But that was alright – they had time for her to figure it out. But she really ought to get used to hugging him. After all, he did like a nice cuddle, and thought it best if Ze acclimated to this as soon as possible. There was nothing better, in Sirius's mind, than getting tangled up with the girl you fancied and lazing around for a few hours. A nice squashy sofa did make things more comfortable, but anywhere was fine really –

'Helllllooooo.'

'Mughf?'

'You eat a bad Chocolate Frog or something?' Ze asked, peering at him concernedly.

The look on her face was so charmingly fretful that Sirius couldn't quite manage to keep from smiling soppily. And then he remembered that staring lovingly into Ze's eyes was not yet an Acceptable Pastime, and rushed to paste on a perfectly blank expression. 'Er….no. I was just –'

'Good,' she said brusquely. Sirius realised she was sitting up and looking around, and hastily pushed himself up onto his elbows, wondering how he was supposed to work the snuggling in now. 'If I'd had to walk you to hospital,' Ze was saying, 'it would really have slowed me down.'

'Hospital? Who's going to hospital?' Sirius asked worriedly.

'No one,' Ze said impatiently, crawling across the floor toward the pair of shoes she'd abandoned earlier, 'as you're not suffering from indigestion. So I can get on with it.'

Sirius, who hated to see her go, but was ecstatic with watching her crawl away, was surprised (and, once the pain subsided, rather impressed) at the force with which his Morals sucker-punched his Libido. If such a thing as the Conscious Mind can be bruised and winded, Sirius's was bent double at the waist, worrying over the state of its kidneys. 'G-get on with what?' he managed to garble out, once he'd averted his eyes and safely embarked on a "we cannot touch, we cannot touch" mantra.

Ze snatched up her shoes, turned round to face him, and began to viciously ram her feet into them. 'With going to the library,' she said, her tone indicating that he was quite possibly a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

'The library?' he repeated, bewildered and mentally over-taxed. 'We cannot to-,' he began in his deep, meditative mantra voice. And then he caught himself, hastily cleared his throat, and squeaked, 'I mean, why would we go to the library?'

'You don't have to come,' Ze replied sensibly. 'I'm just going to see if I can find something on the history of fairies in Britain.'

'There're all those…books. It isn't very nice,' Sirius was babbling. 'This place is nice. I like it here. Let's stay.' So that I can lie on the carpet next to you and think pervy thoughts.

Ze had now gone completely still and was watching Sirius – who was beginning to sweat visibly and looked close to combustion – with a very concerned expression. 'Er, Sirius, have you looked at this place?'

Sirius, whose eyes hadn't once flicked to the walls, felt his gut clench with prescient horror. In a strange, primitive way, he knew what was coming. Not that it made it any easier to bear. His eyes didn't want to leave Ze's face and ignored the first three commands he issued, resulting in a most disturbing vibrating-of-pupils. And then his central nervous system triumphed over the little hairs on the back of his neck and his retina were gathering in the whole demonic spectrum. He was dimly aware that he might be issuing an embarrassingly effeminate scream. But really, could he be blamed? The only possible positive - and he used the term veryloosely – was that his hormone levels shot back into balance so fast he briefly considered becoming a monk. And all because of the yellow. One look at those walls and any prurient desire would be instantly squelched. The daisies alone were so horrible they'd have had Casanova saying "can't we just have a cuddle?" The word "hideous" offered the decorative scheme about as much coverage as a hand towel offers a fat man: it technically did the job, but left you with the icky feeling that it could have been done a right sight better. 'What is this place?' Sirius heard himself ask in tones of deepest awe.

'I found it one day a few years ago on a wander,' Ze shrugged, tying her shoelaces off. 'It's perfect for when you're in a really foul mood.'

Sirius's eyes darted to the yellow walls and vicious, psycho killer daisies. 'Er…'

Ze glanced up and caught enough of what was in his face to understand that the explanation was going to need to be a bit more comprehensive. 'I don't like it,' she hastened to explain. 'That's really sort of the point. It's where I come when…um…okay, you know how there're places you like to be when you're happy because you want the happiness to just sort of…spill over?' she asked, flipping her hand about to encompass this concept of cosmic bubbly-ness. 'Like you want all those lovely feelings to be associated with a place because whenever you spend time there you'll be reminded of how thrilled you were? Well, this is a bit like the reverse of that. It's awful to begin with so all the nasty thoughts and negative energy just sort of belong, and when you need to stomp around and scream at the top of your voice you don't feel guilty. Although I think maybe the room's started to suck all the negativity up, because some really weird stuff happens if you stay too long...'

Sirius nodded slowly: you didn't get much more in the way of "really weird stuff" than bluebirds frolicking on the ceiling. And the words "negative energy" perfectly encapsulated the nauseous feeling he had when he looked at those horrible daisies. It would be hard to find anything more frightening than the sort of mind that would dream up a place like this. In fact, he was pretty sure it would take breaking the seventh seal and inviting in things with loads of eyes and far too many tentacles. All of which sounded strangely like Divination homework, which he avoided like the proverbial plague. 'Brilliant,' he said with a nod, trying not to look too closely at any of it, lest he decide that whistling a dwarfish tune about going off to work really was a good idea. 'Any chance of getting the daisies down?' he asked optimistically as Ze stood.

'No,' she sighed with a shake of her head. 'They're immune to everything,' she explained, already turning towards the door, clearly on a mission.

'Even killer butterflies?' Sirius asked hopefully from the centre of the room, not quite ready to give up.

Ze, who was just reaching the threshold, shrugged and glanced back. 'You can try, but last time the daisies just grew teeth and ate them.' And with that, she was pattering down the stairs.

'Grew…teeth…' Sirius murmured. 'Right. I'll just be going then,' he said to the room at large.

And then he backed away. Very, very slowly.

*.*.*

'What d'you mean, closed?'

Ze and Sirius were standing just outside the doors to the library, receiving one of the most shocking revelations of adolescence: even people who catalogue books for a living have lives.

'Librarians need a holiday just like anyone else,' sniffed Miss Pince, the sour faced girl better known as "Pinchy" who guarded the enquiries desk. 'It's been years since Madame Dewey had a bit of time off – she's very selfless that way.' The way Pinchy uttered the words "that way" indicated that Madame Dewey was rather stingier in other ways – most likely with the keys to the advanced grimories. 'She'll be back Tuesday – until then, we're on restricted hours,' Pinchy added, pointing to a small, depressingly neat sign posted by the door.

'You can't have restricted hours,' Sirius exclaimed, the part of him trying to hold back all the energy and frustration centring on Ze dimly aware that it had just found an outlet. 'This is a school – people need to study!'

Ze rather wondered whom he was talking about when he said "people" – and apparently Pinchy felt the same. 'So that's what you call faffing about and carving your name into the tables these days,' she sniped, nose in the air as though she had decades on the students rather than a few scant years. 'I'm terribly sorry to disappoint you, but you'll just have to come back when we're open.'

'Look, couldn't we just –' Ze began.

'Oh, and when will that be?' Sirius snarled, leaning forward in an exaggerated pose to read the painfully precise writing on the sign. 'Ah – tomorrow,' he said in tones of mock surprise. 'At half eight in the morning. How lovely.'

'Yes, I daresay –'

'The only question is, if you can be open at half past eight on a Sunday morning, why the bloody hell can't you be open at half past eight on a Saturday night!' he cried.

'Young man, you are being entirely impertinent!'

'And you're being entirely ridiculous!' Seemingly realising that he was shouting and waving his arms, Sirius made a massive effort to regain control. When he continued, he was much calmer – almost charming. 'Look, we just need to have a peek in a book or two and you're still here – what's the problem?'

'If you must know,' came the icy reply, 'I have plans.'

Sirius deflated. 'Plans?' he repeated, sounding completely nonplussed.

'Yes,' Miss Pince said primly. 'Not that it's any of your business, but a young man is escorting me out. To the theatre. And then we're having ice cream.'

'Er…congratulations?' Ze offered into the deafening silence that followed this revelation.

Miss Pince spared her a vaguely regal nod, accompanied by an almost friendly expression of acknowledgement.

'But,' Sirius began.

The hint of sanguinity disappeared. 'No,' the junior librarian snapped, and the door swung closed with a great hollow boom, quickly followed by the disheartening snicks of no less than seventeen locks.

'That went well,' Ze muttered.

'"Congratulations"?' Sirius asked disbelievingly.

'What? She was excited – I had to say something.'

'So what – "congratulations"?! Merlin's shorts, but I feel sorry for him – whoever's taking her out,' he added when Ze arched a brow. 'To the theatre - ha! If it was me, I'd be taking her somewhere dark where she couldn't talk too.'

'Is this rage a recent thing, or are you just generally biased against librarians?'

'She locked us out!' he cried indignantly.

'So,' Ze said with a shrug. 'We just wait another half hour and sneak in. You know the back way in everywhere – how hard can it be?'

And thus Sirius had his first experience with Personal Disappointment. There Ze was, looking up at him with that confident half-smile, secure in the knowledge that he could take her anywhere. And, of course, she wanted to go the one place (alright, there were probably more, but he couldn't be bothered to think of them at the moment) there was no chance of going. It was a humbling moment. 'Ah, well…' he cleared his throat. 'Well the thing is…er…there's no passage in,' he said on a rush.

Ze's brow furrowed slightly. 'No passage – but – come on –'

Sirius was shaking his head heavily. 'We've been looking for years – if there was one, we'd have found it by now. Unless it was really, really clever,' he added, not wanting to sound too over-confident. 'This and the Great Hall are the oldest parts of the castle – well, and the dungeons. The rest got added on as it was needed.'

'Added on by magic…and wherever there's magic odd things start happening,' Ze nodded, her shoulders slumping slightly. 'It seeps down into the rock and you get weird passages and missing stairs and walls that aren't walls as a sort of byproduct.' Her voice had gone empty and monotone, as though she were reciting a particularly boring lecture – which, it happened, she was: Professor Binns, year two, Magical Manifestations (And What They Have To Do With Goblin Cookbooks).

'Right in one,' Sirius sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. 'Only this part was built back before they'd quite got the magic working, so it was done by hand – or oxen or pulley or whatever – and it hasn't got those, er...'

'Additions?' Ze suggested.

'Sure,' Sirius shrugged. 'So unless Madame Dewey is a lot more devious than I think she is…there's no back door.'

Ze nodded slowly, chewing on her lip. At last she blew out a great breath and summoned up a smile. 'Right then – tomorrow morning it is.'

'I feel really bad, Zaz – I mean, I've told you all this stuff and now I can't –'

'Sirius, it isn't your fault,' Ze soothed, putting her hand on his arm. 'If I were going to die of curiosity it would have happened when my head was in the Sorting Hat – I can last one more night.'

Yes, but I've disappointed you, and I'm not sure I can last one more night… 'I really am sorry.'

'For what? Giving me something to think about besides what frog breath tastes like?' she joked feebly. 'Stop worrying so much. We could probably both do with an early night anyway.'

Early…night…. Sirius groaned aloud. Thankfully, his stomach chose the exact same moment to issue an alarmingly complex growl, and the two sounds mixed perfectly. 'Ummm…' he began, embarrassed.

Ze's stomach, apparently not immune to the challenge, gave an answering roar. She grinned sheepishly. 'Sorry, missed dinner.'

'Me too,' he replied, not about to tell her that he'd been moping around in a tower as well.

'It's over by now though,' she pointed out, glancing longingly down the corridor toward the Great Hall.

Sirius grinned. You'll explode, his common sense piped up. Spend another hour around her and you'll go up in flames, it warned. Ah, but it will be worth it, he replied dreamily. Aloud, he said: 'Yes, well, I do know where the kitchens are.'

'Do you then?' Ze laughed, linking her arm through his.

Grinning widely, Sirius gestured down the corridor. 'Right this way madam…'

*.*.*.*.*

It was a testament to the restorative powers of steak and gravy pie that Ze was smiling when she entered her dormitory nearly two hours later. Whatever qualms she had had about invading the hallowed ground of Hogwarts' kitchens, they were well and safely banished. The house elves, always eager to please, had practically broken into a choreographed dance routine at the sight of Sirius looming through the door. In a matter of moments Ze had been presented with a selection of cheeses and nibbles to "tide her over" whilst the main course was prepared. Sirius, grinning broadly and asking after various of the elves' relatives, introduced her around and assured the bevy of waist-high gourmands that "Miss Ze" was worthy of their talents. Before the meal was over she had felt as well-connected as Serena – and had every intention of telling her dorm-mate all about it.

But the scene she walked into wasn't conducive to an ecstatic food review.

'D'you think it's too tarty to use the word "yummy"?' Dorcas's voice asked from the depths of what appeared to be a maharaja's harem tent.

Ze blinked. The vision did not dissolve. In fact, thanks to the draft from the closing door, it got bigger, huge panels of silken guaze billowing out in every direction. If she squinted, Ze could still make out the frame of a four-poster bed, but somehow the mattress seemed to have got wider and quite a bit lower. In the centre of it all, enthroned like an exotically owlish courtesan, was Dorcas, enswathed in a brilliant blue caftan. She was flourishing a quill, hunched over a piece of parchment spread across her knees. Somehow, eerily, the picture looked right. And then suddenly Serena was emerging from what Ze now realised was an enormous garden pavilion located just slightly behind the harem tent. There seemed to be roses climbing up one side, and while she couldn't be certain, she rather thought there was a statue of a Greek athlete supporting a birdbath…

'Hmmm, "yummy"…' Serena was murmuring, adjusting the sweeping length of cream satin that made up her nightdress. 'I dunno – Lily, what do you - you're back!' Having turned to (presumably) request Lily's opinion, the brunette had spotted Ze, standing – frankly gobsmacked – in the doorway. 'And you're smiling,' Serena continued, grinning broadly herself. 'Definitely a good thing.'

Ze, who had been watching the roses – which appeared to be quite real – twine up the side of Serena's bed and over the canopy, and wasn't so much smiling as grimacing and staring slack-jawed at the same time, only managed to say, 'Errrr…' before Lily was popping her head out of the toilet.

'Did you call - you're back!' the redhead cried in tones of – and Ze didn't think she was exaggerating here – jubilant relief. 'God, you've been ages – we were beginning to think you weren't coming home at all!'

'So,' Serena beamed, leaning forward with a terribly focussed gleam in her eye. 'How was it?'

Even Dorcas was watching with an expression of bright-eyed, bated-breath wonderment, and suddenly Ze didn't have the heart to say "horrible". So she cleared her throat, crossed her fingers behind her back, and tried to smile rather than grimace. 'Ah, well…it was…alright.'

There was a long pause. And then: '"Alright"?' Lily repeated sceptically. 'It's gone ten o'clock – you mean to say you've been out all day and half the bloody night with him and it was just "alright"?'

'Er, well, you see –'

Serena crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes. 'He pulled a Nice Bloke,' didn't he?' she asked darkly, the toe of her satin slipper tapping dangerously against the floor.

'A what?' the other three chorused, Ze's masterful "alright" completely forgotten in the face of acquiring new vocabulary.

'A Nice Bloke,' Serena repeated impatiently. 'You know,' she continued when they failed to have a simultaneous epiphany clarifying the definition. 'You meet a boy and you fancy him and you think he fancies you and he's completely lovely and flirts and charms you and does all the right things and fools you into thinking that snogging him might be a good idea. And once he's had his hands where he wants them he buggers off without so much as a "cheers" and leaves you wondering how such a Nice Bloke could turn into such a Bloody Wanker.'

This was greeted by a very contemplative silence. And then Dorcas raised her hand, requesting permission to ask a question. Serena nodded acknowledgement and Dorcas pushed her glasses up her nose before speaking. 'Well, if he "turns into" a less palatable specimen then, technically, wouldn't he be pulling a "Bloody Wanker" rather than the other way 'round?'

'No,' Serena replied firmly. 'He is a Bloody Wanker. He's "pulling" the Nice Bloke on - like a disguise, see.'

'Ahhhh,' Dorcas nodded, flourishing her quill and scribbling what one could only assume was a shorthand note explaining this essential difference. Lily and Ze exchanged a glance.

'So, did he?' Serena asked. 'Because if he did I'll be teaching him a lesson he won't forget –'

Ze jerked slightly, the implications sinking in. 'What? No! No, he didn't,' she hurried to explain as Serena's eyes got narrower. 'He's a Nice Bloke! No Bloody Wanker to be found. Anywhere,' she added emphatically. 'Ah, just, er….we're not…compatible?' she finally managed, crossing her fingers that she really had heard this listed as a reason for not getting on with a boy, and hadn't just pulled it out of the ether.

'Oh.' Serena deflated a bit, whether because she wasn't going to be teaching any Bloody Wanker lessons, or because she was genuinely disappointed for Ze was anyone's guess. 'Well then.'

'"Well then" indeed,' Lily intoned, crossing her own arms and fixing Ze with a very pointed stare. 'It took you all day to realise you weren't "compatible"?' she asked with a near-architectural arch of one impeccable brow.

Ze had a very difficult time not hunching her shoulders and shuffling her feet in the face of such Head Girl-ish intimidation. 'No,' she mumbled to the floor.

'I'm sorry,' Lily said in tones that clearly indicated she was no such thing. 'I didn't quite catch that.'

Ze sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose before squaring her shoulders and meeting Lily's gaze. 'I said "no" – it didn't take me the whole day to realise it. Colin and I actually split up in the village.'

'But it's been out of bounds for hours,' Serena pointed out.

'Yeah,' Dorcas chimed in. 'They practically chased us out of the bookshop and back up to the castle.'

Ze could have sworn she heard Lily mutter 'Can't imagine why' under her breath.

'It's funny you should say that,' she began with a smile she hoped wasn't too sickly. 'But, um, well…it was just sort of a long day, yeah? I mean, he opened doors for me and carried my bag and kept touching my back like I couldn't tell where I was walking and I'm really not sure I like any of that. At all. And then some…things happened, and we, er, we decided that it'd be best if we just went our separate ways. Not that he isn't lovely,' she added desperately. 'Because he is. Really. I promise. It's just, ah, well, we realised that we're not right….together.'

Lily, Serena, and even Dorcas were watching her with the sort of expressions usually found on the faces of people exiting the Half-Woman, Half-Snake, Half-Kitchen-Sink tent at the circus. And then Serena said, 'You know, I've never been keen on having someone pushing on my back while I'm walking either.'

'He carried your bag?' Lily sneered. 'What, does he think you're so daft you'd buy something you couldn't lift?'

'Holding a door is a sign of common courtesy,' Dorcas commented thoughtfully. The other three stared at her until she glanced up. 'Oh alright,' she sighed. 'I can see how it might translate as a terribly chauvinist slight on one's ability to function for oneself.'

'Too right,' Serena nodded. And then she turned to Ze. 'So, did you kiss him?'

'Ahhh….'

'Oooh, must've been awful,' Lily grimaced.

'It was a bit…damp,' Ze allowed. 'But I'm sure it would've turned out better – ah, well, I'm sure he's a lovely kisser.' She cleared her throat. 'You know, at, um, other times.'

'Oh probably not,' Serena said breezily. 'But that's alright, you're through with him.'

'You still haven't explained what took you so long to come home,' Dorcas pointed out with devastating logic and no small amount of vicious timing.

'Yeah,' Serena and Lily chorused, turning as one back toward Ze. In a way it was a bit like being stuck in some bizarre scene from a stage musical. Even though they weren't wearing poodle skirts and beehive wigs, Ze could easily imagine them snapping their fingers in time and singing "yeah, yeah, yeah" in harmony. Somehow, a beehive might work for Dorcas…a pink one…

'Hallooooo,' Serena was saying, waving her hand in front of Ze's face.

'Sorry,' Ze said, jumping to attention. 'Just, um, never mind. What were you saying?'

'That your date went on for quite awhile, considering you're not planning on having another one,' Lily replied dryly. 'You aren't, are you?' she asked, fixing Ze with a stare.

'Planning a second date,' Serena expanded when Ze continued to look confused.

'Ah, no,' Ze said, feeling for the first time since she'd arrived that she was speaking with full conviction. 'Definitely not.' Which really was a pity, because Colin Cross was quite a nice boy. Maybe she could fix him up with Serena…oh, no, wait, the hand-on-back-whilst-walking thing…

'Are you feeling okay?' Dorcas asked. 'Only your eyes keep losing focus.'

In my head you've got pink hair a metre high. 'Yeah, fine. Just a long day,' Ze said, summoning a smile.

'Which is exactly what we're getting at,' Lily prodded. 'Since you clearly didn't spend all of it with Colin Cross.'

'Oh – oh yeah. Sorry. No, um, I just sort of…met up with Sirius,' she trailed off, discovering that she had no intention of telling them that she and Sirius had rowed, or that she'd spent most of the evening contemplating daisy-cide in the ugliest room in the castle.

'Mmmm,' Lily said, lips pursed.

Dorcas opened her mouth, face fixed in an expression of curiosity, and Serena promptly elbowed her in the ribs. 'Well that must've been nice…' the taller girl beamed.

Ze, feeling that there was more to all the lip-pursing and rib-elbowing than she was grasping, managed a shrug. 'Yeah, it turned out alright. But enough about me – what did you get up to? And why have get got an incense burner instead of a wash-basin?' she added, brow furrowing deeply as she noticed this new addition to the décor.

'There was a sale on at Willoughby and Spatts,' Dorcas said happily. 'We thought it was time for a bit of a change.'

So you bought the Arabian Nights Experience and a full set of garden statuary? 'Lovely,' Ze managed to cough out. 'Lily, didn't you fancy anything?' she asked innocently when she'd managed to suppress her laughter.

Lily's lips twitched but she still managed to glower at Ze, who just grinned impishly. 'Couldn't quite find anything to my taste,' she said as primly as she could.

'They did have a gorgeous Autumn Extravaganza that would've gone perfectly with her hair,' Serena frowned, 'but we just couldn't convince her to do it.'

'Oh, go on Lils,' Ze sniggered, picturing heaps of orange leaves and frost-encrusted grasses surrounding a four-poster bed. 'How'd you say no?'

'Because I've got eyes in my head,' Lily muttered blackly. Thankfully Dorcas and Serena, who appeared to be consulting over a piece of parchment Dorcas had been scribbling on, weren't listening. 'So what really happened with Cross?' Lily asked in a much more serious – and much quieter - voice.

Ze gulped, and for the first time in her life, consciously pretended not to have heard what someone said. 'Oi, what're you two working on? S'not homework, is it?'

The way Dorcas's eyes lit up didn't bode well, but then Serena snorted and said, 'Not likely,' in such convincing tones that Ze almost sighed with relief.

'Serena's come up with the most brilliant plan,' Dorcas was saying, her eyes lit up like torches.

'For getting that tosser Rob back,' Serena elaborated. 'Dorcas told us all about him, see, and how you'd promised to help.'

Yet another of the Worst Ideas Since Naked Rugby that's been MY fault, Ze thought with a mental sigh. 'Really?' she said, in a voice she hoped didn't sound too much like a funeral dirge.

'Here we go,' Lily murmured under her breath, and Ze cut her a quick sideways look.

'You know how you said I ought to watch him, all the time?' Dorcas was asking, her head bobbing in a continuous nod. 'And learn his habits off by heart? Well Serena figured out a way to make it even better!'

'Oh, it was really just a thought,' Serena said modestly.

'No, it's brilliant,' Dorcas crowed. 'I'm going to write him letters, see,' she explained to Ze. 'And pretend like I'm some creepy secret admirer who's obsessed with him and knows all his naughty little secrets.'

'Pretend?' Ze and Lily chorused sotto voce.

Luckily, Dorcas didn't hear them. Neither did Serena; the two girls were far too busy looking frighteningly like cats who've got all the cream and the canary too. 'It'll drive him mad,' Dorcas said with relish.

'And he'll be so desperate to find out who she is that he'll spend all of his time thinking of her and suddenly he'll realise that he doesn't hate her at all – that he's madly in love,' Serena burbled. 'His entire demeanour will change and he'll get lonesome and despondent and horribly moody and when she does reveal herself he'll confess his undying devotion and Dorcas will –'

'Ruthlessly crush his heart under my foot,' Dorcas interrupted gleefully.

Serena pouted slightly and turned to face Dorcas with her hands on her hips. 'Or you could realise that he really is a changed man, capable of being tender and caring and worthy of your affection and eternal love.' There was a very long pause. 'What?' she cried. 'That's what happened to Lady Miranda in My Dearest Rogue!'

Ze gaped. 'You're basing your plan on a romance novel?'

Serena and Dorcas blinked at her. 'Of course,' Serena said, as though this were the most natural thing in the world.

'The entire thing is perfect, really,' Dorcas was saying. 'It's Serena's favourite book and bears a frightening resemblance to my situation.' Ze gulped and wondered if it would be too obvious to stuff a sock into her mouth to muffle the laughter. 'Lady Miranda is looked down upon by her peers because she lacks flowing golden locks and ruby-red lips.'

'But she has a keen mind, and when the devilishly handsome and rakish earl of Rockcliff kisses her at a ball on a dare and makes her a laughingstock she vows revenge,' Serena broke in. 'Of course, she hasn't got the social power to hurt him as he's the richest and most powerful man in London –'

'In 1812,' Lily muttered.

'- so instead she wages a war of letters! It's really quite clever – she sneaks around after him and figures out everything he does. Who he's shagging, when he loses at cards, the fact that he supports an entire orphanage full of children in reaction to his own horrible and neglected childhood…' Serena paused with a silly smile on her face, and Ze rather wondered if she weren't off in some mental corner wearing a purple ball-gown and calling herself Lady Miranda. 'Ha!' Serena cried, and jumped back to the present. 'Right, where was I?'

'The orphanage full of children,' Dorcas reminded helpfully.

'Yes, yes, well, the point is, she starts writing him letters, and each letter begins "My dearest Rogue" – that's what she calls him, see, "Roguish Roland", because he's called Roland and he's –'

'A rogue?' Ze guessed.

'Exactly,' Serena beamed, looking ready to award house points. 'And she's always telling him about all the naughty things he's done and letting him think she's telling other people about them as well, and he starts to go off his trolley. Of course, he has no idea who she is, as she signs the letters "Lady X" and he never catches anyone delivering them. He becomes completely obsessed with discovering who she is and gives up his roguish ways and awful habits.'

'So what does she write to him about then, if he's given all the naughty things up?' Ze asked, not quite seeing how this qualified as a sustainable plotline.

'Oh, well of course by then she's realised that he's rather tormented and really just needs the love and care of the right woman to realise his potential as a productive and happy member of society, so she agrees to meet him at midnight in the Duchess of Wyndon's rear garden and they share a night of passion but he never sees her face as she flees before the sun comes up.'

'Probably freezing her tits off and wanted to get into a proper bed,' Lily mumbled.

'She shags him and then runs off? What kind of –'

'She's afraid that if he sees her face and realises that he's just made love to the Ugly Duckling – that's what they call her, everyone in London – then he'll be furious,' Serena said sadly. 'It's her own insecurities, right, because she thinks that someone as beautiful as he is could never love someone like her. But he does think she's beautiful because he knows her mind now, because she's written him all these letters, and so he goes around London making a fool out of himself trying to find her, just like she hoped he would, only when the time comes for her to publicly humiliate him she can't quite go through with it.'

'Hence the declarations of love and fluffy ending,' Dorcas finished off with a dismissive wave of her hand. 'Not,' she added in steely tones, 'that I plan to fall into the same trap. You won't find me being seduced by promises of love eternal and a heart awakened by passion! Oh no – I want revenge.' And with that astounding pronouncement – accompanied by a raised fist and profile view of their Intrepid Heroine – Dorcas snatched up her quill and went back to composing her Letter of Vengeance.

'It's just like Lady Miranda says,' Serena sighed, shaking her head sadly and (Ze noted with equal measures of respect and horror) striking a graceful pose. 'We know not ourselves until the power of love moves us.'

'Er, Serena,' Ze began hesitantly when the other girl hadn't moved for several seconds. 'You do know that Lady Miranda isn't real -'

Lily elbowed her in the ribs so hard Ze could have sworn she heard a crack. 'Not,' the redhead hissed, 'a battle you want to fight. Trust me.'

Ze, trying to massage her ribs unobtrusively, just nodded and let out a little gasp of pain. 'Yeah,' she grimaced. 'Got it. Lovely plan,' she added to Serena, who was leaning over Dorcas conspiratorially. 'I'm just going to…' she winced and glanced hastily around for an excuse. 'Ahm…have a wee.' And with that, she shot a meaningful glower at Lily and hobbled for the loo.

*.

Moments later she heard the door to the toilet shut behind her. 'Good god, you could cobb for England,' she groaned to Lily, raising her jumper and examining the large, livid red patch on her ribs. 'That'll bruise up a treat,' she muttered, turning to face her friend, who was shaking her head and muttering to herself. 'What happened?' Ze asked, utterly bewildered. 'They were normal – well, mostly – when I left this morning. What did you do to them?'

'What did I do?' Lily asked, taking a break from her fevered pacing to poke herself righteously and indignantly in the chest. 'What do you mean, what did I do? I didn't do anything! I just followed them around the village trying to keep them from attacking strangers!' Ze's brows drew together, but she didn't need to ask any leading questions to get Lily to elaborate. 'It all started with that stupid sweet shop,' the redhead snarled. 'One look at the Cockroach Clusters and Dorcas is blubbing all over – so of course we have to go to the pub and a pint of cider later we're out for blood. I blame Lady Miranda!'

'Er, I thought she wasn't real-'

'Oh she's real alright,' Lily snapped. 'Real enough to be the bane of my existence! We had to go to the post office to send off to Serena's mum for that stupid book and the owl did a poo on me!'

'And the blood comes in where?' Ze asked hesitantly, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

'Where?' Lily asked on a hysterical giggle. 'Oh, everywhere. In the shop it was Rob for making Dorcas cry and in the street it was Fiona Weatherby for calling Serena a slag and in the pub it was the Ravenclaws for not letting us have a chair and after one drink it was the boys at Hogwarts and after two it was boys in general and after three it was Rosemerta for being out of lemonade – by the way, have you got any idea how foul that stuff is?' Ze started to soothe but she was rolled right over by Lily's wrath. 'And the whole time I'm hearing how Lady Miranda would have triumphed over it all. If I ever get my hands on that daft cow –'

'Not real,' Ze said, prying a hapless and unlucky shampoo out of Lily's strangling grip. 'She's not real.'

'Ha! That's what you think. But you didn't have to go to the bookshop looking for a copy of the Stupid Bloody Rogue, did you? And you didn't have to cart around a birdbath with a grape leaf over its willy! Or listen to two people with the musical aptitude of a bilious hedgehog sing "The Warlock's Staff". Do you know how many verses that song has got?'

Small flecks of foam were beginning to collect around the corners of Lily's mouth, and Ze would swear her eyes were glowing. The suspicion that James might have a faintly masochistic kink was forming rapidly in her mind. 'Er…three?' she guessed helplessly.

'Seventeen,' Lily growled in a voice that conjured up images of lakes of fire.

'Ah,' Ze said, wondering if demons could be warded off with fancy floral-scented soap. It didn't seem likely, so she filched a toothbrush too, just to be safe.

'I didn't know there were that many penis jokes in the entire universe. If I ever meet the man – and you can be sure it was a man – who wrote that song…' Lily's voice trailed off as her hands continued to sign out – in graphic and alarming detail – exactly what would happen. Just as Ze was preparing for the inevitable head-spinning-round bit all the tension leaked out of Lily, her hands dropped to her sides, her hair smoothed down and her mouth eased into a gently curving smile. 'So, what really happened with you and Cross in the village?'

Ze just gaped, her mouth popping open and closed soundlessly as she tried to fathom what she had just seen. 'Uh – uh – uh – frogs? Nothing? Nothing,' she hastily decided. 'Nothing.'

Lily tilted her head on one side and looked Ze over very, very carefully. Ze fought the urge to squirm. 'You talked it over with Sirius?'

Ze had the awful feeling that Lily was talking about quite a bit more than the Adventures of Colin the Frog, but she wasn't sure what that "bit more" was. 'Er…yes?'

There was another long, spine-tingling pause, and them Lily said, 'Mmmm.' And it wasn't the "Mmmm" of "gosh, that's nice chocolate". It was the "Mmmm" of "I see, Ms Meridian, and how, precisely, did you come to the conclusion that you need psychotherapy?" This, Ze thought desperately, gesturing to the entire mad, mad world. THIS is why I need psychotherapy!

'Why are you waving Grace's soap around in the air?' Lily asked, and Ze crashed back down to earth.

'What?'

'Grace's soap and – here, that's my toothbrush!'

'Oh, ahhhh – sorry! I, um, I knocked them off the sink? So I…caught them? Before they hit the floor? Yeah. Yeah, I caught them,' Ze said, nodding so rapidly her jaw rattled. 'Didn't want them, you know, getting dirty.'

'Oh,' Lily said, faintly puzzled. 'Well, thanks.' She reached over and took the toothbrush, which Ze was holding out in that faintly confused way people caught warding off demons with dental hygiene paraphernalia often have. 'You'd better put that soap back exactly as it was though – Grace'll go absolutely mental if she thinks it's been messed with. It's from some posh shop in Paris or something.'

Ze hastily put the soap back onto the sink where she thought it had been and turned on the taps to wash the scent off her hands. She was just scrubbing down when Lily said, in a very thoughtful voice, 'Speaking of Grace… have you seen her lately?'

'Er…' Grace wasn't someone Ze usually looked for. In fact, she was someone Ze usually avoided looking for, because if she looked for Grace then she'd have to see Grace, and that was never good for the mental health status. 'No,' she said after wracking her brains. 'No, I haven't seen her since…um, whenever we had that night in? That was what, Thursday?' Had it really been only Thursday? Ze cocked her head. It felt like it had been ages – weeks at least.

'Yeah,' Lily was murmuring, looking as struck by the time flow as Ze was. 'Yeah, that's the last time I saw her as well. I mean, she must have been at classes yesterday, but…'

But no one noticed… Ze shook her head to rid herself of the icky feeling Grace seemed to leave behind, even in the form of thoughts. 'Weird,' she shrugged. 'Can't say I'm sorry though. So, what're we going to do about them?'

'Them?' Lily echoed, shaking her head for much the same reason Ze had just done.

'Lady Serena and Madame X,' Ze said, tipping her head towards the dormitory on the other side of the bathroom door. 'Who are even now plotting the destruction of the world by love letter.'

'Well, if it worked for Lady Miranda,' Lily replied dramatically, tossing her hair.

Ze grinned. 'I dunno – Lady Miranda sounds like a lot of fun. Definitely a liberated woman, ready to pash and dash with the best of them.'

Lily chuckled and shook her head. 'I don't think there's anything to do. I mean, it's not like they're hurting anything. And, while I have the utmost respect for Dorcas's skills at prevarication, I don't see it turning into more than a mildly epic disaster.'

Ze grimaced, wondering if Lily had any idea of the size of the tiger whose tail she was pulling. After all, this was Rob. He'd once eaten a jar of Mustrum's Bowel Bang just to see what it tasted like. Once they'd got him unstuck out of the plumbing pipe and swept up the wreckage of the toilet, he'd admitted that a little less pepper would have helped it go down easier. Curiosity might be murder where cats were concerned, but the universe hadn't ever planned on Rob. Then again, he'd probably need an unabridged dictionary and a translation service just to get through the opening salutation in any letter Dorcas might write, so perhaps they weren't in so much trouble after all…

'That expression on your face has me rethinking my statement…' Lily said slowly, pursing her lips.

'Hm? Oh, no – I was just thinking how weird it would be if their plan worked,' Ze said, deciding that Lily didn't need to know about the Bowel Bang experience. Funny things, prefects – they had the strangest notions when it came to rules.

'Probably they'd be perfect for one another,' Lily shrugged. 'Loathing being a sign of love and all that.' Ze fixed her gaze on Lily, one eyebrow hitching ever-so-suggestively up her forehead. 'What?' Lily asked. 'I just said – oh,' she paused. 'No, that isn't what I meant –' she sputtered, growing increasingly flustered. 'I mean, I did mean it but – I was joking – just about Dorcas and Rob – I mean, that would never happen – Potter and I – wait, there is no Potter and I – what I mean is –'

'What you mean is,' Ze said with a very smug smile, 'that you and James are governed by laws that don't pertain to the rest of the universe.'

'No, I –'

'While some people might be able to stomach so nauseously common a story as meeting, hating, fighting, and falling in love, you're far too sensible to pay attention to the odds,' Ze continued, folding her arms. 'You know how you feel, it isn't going to change, and the world can just get on with things, right?'

Lily's eyes had been darting around feverishly, and now they came to rest, glaring narrowly, on Ze's face. Lily's arms snapped into a fold over her own chest, and her chin jutted mulishly out. 'No that is not -' she paused, her eyes narrowing further as she realised that disagreeing with Ze would mean agreeing that she might possibly be able to get on with Potter. 'This isn't a fairly stated –' Ze tilted her head and gave the sort of look that says "are you really going to stoop that low?" Lily growled. 'I do not fancy Potter,' she snapped. 'I have no feelings whatsoever for him. I am completely neutral.' Her nose was now thrust into the air, and Ze had to keep herself from grinning like a lunatic. 'Sometimes he provokes me, but we always resolve our differences.'

Lily's tone left the words "so there" hanging most childishly in the air, and Ze just barely managed to keep from crowing. 'Of course,' she said, magnanimous in her victory. 'I'm so glad you explained that – it'll make me feel so much better the next time you and James have a shouting match. Now,' she added, before Lily could decide where to land the punch. 'I don't know about you, but I've had a very long day. I think I'll turn in…if my bed hasn't been eaten by those bloody roses.'

*.

It turned out that Ze's bed had not, in fact, been eaten by the roses. It had, however, acquired a rather pungent smell of sandalwood, courtesy of the draft from the door and the smoke streaming from the incense burner. But, compared to the alternative (let's just say that Serena was going to find it very thorny going when she tried to get up the next morning), she imagined she could survive. She also made a mental note to kick the burner over at the very earliest opportunity – preferably when no one would be around to see her stomp it into tiny, irreparable pieces.

As she had expected, Lily had decided no comment was the best comment, and instead of continuing to proclaim her "neutrality", had gone off to bed. Thankfully Serena had also retired for her beauty sleep, and so the dormitory was silent except for the faint skritching noises coming from Dorcas's new and improved lair. Or maybe not so improved – Ze would admit that the gauzy curtains were pretty, albeit in a garish way, but they had nothing on crimson velvet when it came to sound and light barriers. The entire extravaganza was sending a rosy golden glow across the dormitory as Dorcas's light seeped through the layers of fabric, and Ze sighed as she turned onto her side in her own bed. Never the soundest of sleepers, she usually shut her own curtains up to prevent the noise and light of the other girls from keeping her awake. But, as tonight that would lead to asphyxiation, she supposed she would just have to wait until Dorcas had properly parsed her bait.

It was a wonder, really, that all of this was happening. That Serena and Dorcas were conspiring together, that Ze and Lily were having conversations in the loo. If Ze hadn't known how alarmingly real the surreal could be at Hogwarts, she might have said it was a dream. And stranger still was the fact that Dorcas was really doing it – getting revenge on Rob. Ze wasn't quite ready to pretend she thought it might actually work, but there was no denying that the possibility was a little thrilling, almost like watching the seal beating the trainer on the nose with the big rubber ball. And the fact that Dorcas, whose passion was schoolwork and whose friends were the librarians, was planning it all –

Wait a tick.

Librarians.

Ze did some rapid thinking, dredging her memory banks for anything that might help. Because she rather thought – yes she definitely did remember! Of course – how could she have been so stupid? How many times had Dorcas returned from the Library well after its hallowed doors had been closed for the evening? And how often had Ze seen her (alright, not that often, as Ze didn't precisely haunt the library) chatting with Madame Dewey and Miss Pince behind the enquiries desk? There was no doubt about it – Dorcas knew the library better than anyone. Even the Ravenclaws. She was fairly certain that Dorcas sometimes helped out a bit with the reshelving when there had been a massive Charms review. Which meant…

Ze was out of her bed and across the room before she'd even thought up a decent excuse for needing to know. Pausing for a moment just outside the shimmering curtains, she gnawed on her lip and then, deciding that she probably just ought to trust her gut, she tapped on the nearest post and said, 'Oi, Dorcas,' in a whisper.

There was a rustling of silken cushions and Dorcas's head was suddenly protruding from a break in the diaphanous panels. Ze half expected her to say "who goes there?", but all that came out was a puzzled, 'yes?'

You're nice. How do I always forget that? Ze thought. It was quickly followed by, friends don't lie to friends. 'I need your help,' Ze said quietly. 'Can I…er, come in? Just for a minute?'

Dorcas, still looking faintly puzzled, nodded. 'Sure. Mind the tassels,' she added, just as Ze got hit with a mouthful of wiggling silky string.

'Mmgmgh,' she mumbled, spitting it back out and ducking and weaving carefully until she was kneeling on what appeared to be a low, wide divan. 'This is nice,' she said after a moment of glancing around the sweeping panels of the ceiling, bedecked with stars, and the rich, soft rugs piled under the cushions. 'Very nice,' she admitted, mentally adding, except for the bloody incense.

'So,' Dorcas asked, leaning back against what had once been a head-board. 'What's the trouble?'

What came to mind was: "I've just discovered that somewhere back on the family tree someone shagged a faerie, and now I need to know for sure if I'm going to keep turning people into frogs or if it was just a one-off". Thankfully the words bypassed her internal coffee filter, and what came out was, 'I really need to check this book in the library, only when I went this evening it was closed.'

'Oh, yeah,' Dorcas nodded, 'the Library is on Restricted Hours until Madame Dewey comes back.'

How does she do that? She says "library", and you KNOW there's a capital letter! How!? 'Er, yeah,' Ze agreed, hoping she wasn't about to get told off. 'I was really upset, see, 'cos it's sort of important, and I can't seem to fall asleep. And then I remembered that you know the library better than anyone, and that if there were another way in…you know, like a back door or something…' She trailed off, crossing her fingers.

Dorcas was silent for a long moment, during which she watched Ze very, very closely. And, just when Ze was about to give a nervous smile and creep, ashamed, back to bed, Dorcas spoke. 'Like a secret passageway, you mean?'

Ze's heart jumped. 'Welll…I suppose, yeah.' She didn't dare ask "is there one?", knowing that would only get her a mysterious Dorcas-smile.

Dorcas chewed on her lip for a moment, and then glanced around the room, dimly visible through the translucent curtains. Almost as though she were scanning for spies… Then, in an impressively secretive manner, she gestured Ze forward. 'This is top-secret, yeah?' Ze nodded. 'And if you use it, you've got to promise not to leave a thing out of place, yeah?' Another nod, this one faster and more emphatic. 'And that you won't damage anything – no pranks, no jokes, nothing.'

'Of course,' Ze promised.

'Right, well…' Dorcas scanned the room once more, then dipped her head even closer, and began to whisper furiously.

*.*.*

Sirius was having a very rough night of it. He'd returned to his dormitory to find it completely empty, except for James, whose head was buried in a book on the native birds of the Isle of Skye. Sirius had a sneaking suspicion that there would be quite a lot of information on sea gulls, but decided it best not to comment. He had, after all, been in a relatively good mood. "Relatively" being the key term. Though full of good food, fresh from good company, and hoping for a good night's sleep, he'd felt stretched tighter than a bow string. It might have been stress over a looming Transfiguration essay, but Sirius was going to have to go with a diagnosis of Extreme Lust brought on by Prolonged Contact with the Object of His Desires.

A cold shower had made things marginally better. A half hour of press-ups and crunches had been a further improvement, partially because it required yet another cold shower to wash the sweat away. A bit of light reading – borrowed from James, and entitled 1001 Fungi of the Midlands, a treatise on the Powers of Preventative Indigestion by Maligius J. Molehill, Esq. - had put him in the perfect frame of mind to fall asleep, which he had promptly done. And that, of course, was when the real trouble had started.

Because sleeping meant dreaming, and dreaming meant doing things he wasn't allowed to do. Of course, it was all in his head… He was dimly aware that first Remus, and then Peter had returned from whatever misadventures they'd been having, and even faintly surfaced when the lights were put out and the dormitory filled with the fitful rustlings of four boys in restless sleep. But soon he was back in deepest dreamland, with his Conscience and his Morals standing to one side wringing their hands and passing a flask of medicinal cordial between them.

In fact, he was so deeply immersed in a fantasy world of his own making that he didn't register the faint rush of air that carried his name right by his ear. And, though he managed to sleep through the second attempt, he couldn't quite make it through the third. After all, someone grabbing you and shaking you by the shoulders does tend to be a rather traumatic experience. For Sirius, who was not unused to being woken for a midnight round of Whose Head Should We Dunk in the Toilet?, came immediately awake and sat straight up, reaching reflexively for his wand.

He was halfway there when he realised that someone had clamped a hand over his mouth and was pushing him back down. Immediately afterwards he registered that there was a weight resting on the mattress by his left hip, and that his bed curtains had been drawn shut. 'Calm down,' Ze's voice whispered in the darkness. 'It's me.'

And Sirius knew all of his dreams had come true at once – or, all the ones that involved Ze but not a flying motorbike.

'What would you say,' her voice continued as his eyes adjusted, allowing him to pick out the turn of her cheek and the flash of her eyes, 'if I told you that I had a secret passageway you'd never explored?'

I would take the words at their most sexual, perverted meaning and ask for a guided tour, he replied quite honestly. Fortunately for his dignity, his scattered wits translated this verbally as: 'Mmmmggghhhhh.'

'Oh, sorry,' Ze whispered apologetically, removing her hand from his mouth. 'Didn't quite catch that.'

Sirius, who was by now awake enough to infer that Ze was not, in fact, here to shag him rotten, managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. Painfully grateful for the darkness, which was covering all manner of sins, he tried valiantly not to blush and said, 'What, now?'

'Yes, now,' she replied with a roll of her eyes, their glitter the only thing he could see. 'I thought midnight misadventure was what you specialised in.'

'Well, yeah, but –'

'You scared?' she teased, and this time it was her teeth that flashed faintly in the shadow of a grin. Sirius had never heard of a Cheshire Cat, but if he had, he would have been able to tell Lewis Carroll all about the advantages of the Cheshire Girl.

'No,' he answered immediately.

'Right, get your kit on,' she said, patting his leg briskly. 'We've got loads to do.'

A/N:

as always, apologies for the endless wait between chapters. i could blame it on life, school, work and laziness (all of which would be true) but the main reason this is taking so long is that there are some massive plot-knots to unravel. i'm doing my best to shift things around so that i don't have to go back and change things (i'd really rather not re-write, and have a feeling you'd rather not re-read) but it's very slow going.

thanks to the incomparable E (see, your name isn't mentioned, but you're getting your credit!) for all her assistance: without her, Serena would have no Lady Miranda to turn to for advice. i will be the first to admit that romance novels aren't my area of expertise, but i've been assured that My Dearest Rogue is as plausible as most.

also, thanks to those who have stopped by my "meet the author" page – i may be using it in the not-so-distant future to beg for help with getting the story back in line!

and, as always, thanks to all who have read and reviewed!


	30. No More We Go ARoving

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 30: No More We Go A-Roving

A faint rustle disturbed the stillness of the Gryffindor common room. There was a gentle sigh as the portrait swung shut, the draught of air momentarily breathing the coals in the hearth back to life. At the top of the boys' staircase the door creaked open and two figures descended in the dim light, the embers giving just enough to keep anyone sneaking through the dark from colliding with the furniture.

Not that Ze or Sirius were sneaking, precisely – it was just that they happened to be wearing black and walking on tip-toe in a manner generally associated with sneaking, but which was, in fact, a new and radical type of tai chi. At least, that was what Ze planned on telling any authority figure that caught her and hung her by the ankles until she told the truth. Which she would never do. Because really, what self-respecting delinquent went to the library?

Part of Ze's brain was pointing out that, aside from establishing that her self-respect could do with a bit of a boost, this really was a genuinely crap idea. The library would be open in less than twelve hours; she could be in her bed, right this very moment, snoring away. Or, her sense of adventure said gleefully, you could be skulking through the castle with the fittest boy of your acquaintance, having a grand time. Ze sighed: what did it say about her that seeing Sirius sprawled shirtless in his bed had made sneaking into his dormitory to wake him worth the trouble?

'Oi, we doing this or not?' he whispered from just behind her.

She thought about the way he looked, delicious and sleep-tousled and wearing that precious Adidas t-shirt that barely fit on him. Thought about the way his eyes had lit up when she'd mentioned a secret passageway. Thought about the name Meridian, and what it might possibly mean… 'Ready when you are, Captain,' she replied, grinning over her shoulder as she started through the portrait hole.

Sirius's lips quirked. 'Captain – I like that.'

Ze's snort was muffled as she exited the common room, Sirius on her heels. 'Of course you would…'

Their footsteps faded gently down the hall, and once more the portrait swung shut with a sigh and a faint snore from the Fat Lady. Again the draught rippled through the room, flaming the coals in the hearth to life, their warm glow glinting off of windows and mirrors and a sheet of pale blonde hair in the deep shadows of a corner. Grace Harper glided silently forward to stare at the doorway with dangerously narrowed eyes. A meticulously manicured finger tapped twice against the back of a folded arm.

The time to hesitate was through.

*.

Somewhere deep in the bowels of the castle something stirred in the darkness. There was a faint pattering sound, like that of tiny feet skittering over stone. And then there came the primordial thump of sharp-clawed paws pinning something to the floor. A tiny squeak was all the mouse got out before it became a small and hastily consumed snack.

From the other end of the corridor a rusty voice crooned, 'Heeere kitty kitty.'

*.

The library did, it turned out, have books on faeries. In fact, it had books on not just types of faeries, but faerie customs, and faerie languages, and faerie geography. There were treatises on family traditions (if one of your children seems to have talents that might eventually eclipse yours, kill it), explanations of trade (if you need something, steal it off someone; if he objects to the theft, turn him into a newt), and even dining protocol at the royal court (it is impolite to murder anyone with your fish fork - however, eye-gouging with said utensil is perfectly acceptable, but only during the soup course).

'No wonder no one wants to admit to being related to them – they're horrible,' Ze said, returning another book to the shelf in disgust. She and Sirius were crouched in one of the dark and dusty corners of the cavernous room, reading by wandlight, which he had said was less likely to be seen – and more easily put out - than the golden glow of a lamp. At first, the task hadn't seemed so daunting – just find the inevitable book about faeries coming into the human world, glance through the chapter on family trees, and be home before sunrise. And then they'd got a look at just how many books on faeries there were.

'People really are obsessed,' Sirius had whispered. 'Blimey – there's a book on sexual positions for water beings!'

'You can't use them, you haven't got gills,' had been Ze's practical reply, issued as she'd grabbed him by the collar on his way past. He was now flipping through musty old tomes with as much enthusiasm as she was – ergo, less with every passing moment. Ze was beginning to wonder if this whole possibly-part-faerie thing was even something she ought to be worried about. You turned a boy into a frog, she reminded herself. If you don't worry about that, you might as well go ahead and book a suite at St. Mungo's.

'Oi!' Sirius hissed, and Ze jerked herself back to the moment. 'Come have a look at this,' he whispered, gesturing to a good-sized book he had opened on one of the study tables.

Abandoning her shelf with something like relief, she made her way across to him, peering over his shoulder. 'Montague's Guide to English Hybrids,' she read in a murmur. 'Hybrids?' she added, just a touch darkly.

'Don't get stroppy – he just means crossbred of two species to make something stronger,' Sirius said impatiently. 'Look, read this.'

It took her a moment to find the line his finger was marking, and another moment to adjust to the old-fashioned printing. But once she did, she realised that, finally, he had found it: Most interesting in this history of beings is the influence Fey blood exerts on those descendants among us some forty generations on. Though less potent than the magical blood passed on by witches and wizards, this Fey inheritance, if you will, remains a very real part of certain bloodlines, the most notable magical families among them being the Goodfellows, Le Feys, and Arnolds. The tracery of Fey blood amongst muggle families is less well-documented, but the names appearing most frequently are Goode and Forrester. The only name recognised as belonging to both muggle and magical families claiming connexion with the sidhe is Meridian –

Ze's head shot up so fast her vision greyed. 'It's in here – my name – Meridian -' She scarcely noticed that her voice was high and fast and loud in the stillness. 'He says not many muggle families can trace themselves,' she glanced down to assure herself – 'and the only family that can that's both magic and muggle is the Meridians. Who is this man – when was this written –' she was closing the book on her hand, angling her wand to read the title page. 'Ademar Montague, Ludus Luminus,' she read, scanning the plate for a year and discovering a series of Roman numerals that, after an embarrassing minute counting up on her fingers, equalled out to meaning 1783. 'Okay Luminus Montague, riddle me this: why I am turning people into frogs? And if you can't tell me –' she broke off as a series of faint clicks, metallic and rather far off, drifted through the air. Moments later, the silence had fallen again – but Ze, feeling uneasy, turned to Sirius. 'Did you hear that?'

He nodded slowly, his head turned towards the front of the library as he strained for any other noise. 'It sounded like someone unlocking –'

They froze completely at the sound of a creaking door. 'Nox!' The whisper came in an urgent chorus, and the light of their wands died just as a greasy, menacing voice spoke.

'Sneaking about, the nasty little buggers – bold as brass, shining lights in the library. We'll show them wot, won't we poppets? Yessss, there's a good girl…' At the first hint of the words they had both dropped to the floor like stones, crouching behind the heavy study table they'd just been leaning over. Ze stared in horror through the legs of the chair in front of her, willing her eyes to adjust to the shadows cast by the mountainous shelves.

'Filch,' Sirius breathed in her ear. 'And that bloody Mrs Norris.'

'Stop talking,' she hissed back, 'and start hiding!'

'We're fine – he'll have a look around and –' he stopped, his nose wrinkling up, sniffing like a dog's. And, just before she could ask him why he'd picked now to loose his mind, Ze smelled it too. The odour was thick, rank, putrid – it slid right over all five senses and went war-crying after the sixth, whether you had one or not. Caught, unluckily with her mouth open, Ze gagged. Trying to cover mouth, nose, and watering eyes all at once, she turned to Sirius and could see, despite the dim light, that all the blood had drained right out of his face. Wide grey eyes latched onto hers, an a hoarse voice whispered one word: 'Popsy.'

Ze's brows drew together. 'What are you – oooh, that mangy old cat? Come on Sirius –'

But Sirius wasn't in the mood for reason, logic, or suicidal last stands. From deep in the darkness he heard a faint scratching sound, like fingernails flickering over a blackboard. And he knew. Knew way deep down where it counts that that fur-encrusted demon was having a pre-ambush chuckle. It may be true that cats cannot laugh. It may also be true that heaven is guarded by iguanas. The point is that only dead men find out.

Sirius didn't waste time with words. He grabbed Ze with one hand and the book with the other, and in one sleek movement was upright and running. There was no time for little formalities like stealth or going around the furniture. There was only time to hear an unholy yowl split the darkness, and to burst for the doors in the sincere knowledge that he was fleeing for his life.

*.

Henry Berbroke, sixth year Ravenclaw prefect and self-confessed Artithmancy nerd, was mere centimetres away from getting his hand inside Cressida Bailey's blouse. It was a moment, Henry had decided, that would compare to nothing short of being made head boy, finally growing facial hair, and winning the lottery all at once. All he had to do was keep kissing her while pretending that he didn't mind the way she used his ears as a sort of steering wheel – it was, he knew, a trifle undignified, but there were worse prices to pay. So absorbed in his goal that he failed to notice the white-faced figures sprinting past him at mach speed, Henry was praying fervently that this was the day Cressida decided to make a man of him. Or, if not a man, then at least a boy who knew what a human female's breast felt like through a bra.

Almost there - almost there -

'I've got you now, you little bastards!' a voice shouted from just around the corner. The shout, echoing off the walls, had Cressida loosening her deathgrip on Henry's ears and Henry popping off one of Cressida's buttons in surprise. They were frozen in an attitude of abject horror, watching that single button summersault through the air, as Filch skidded around the corner and spotted them. 'Stuuuudents!' He shouted. 'Students out of booooounds!'

And Cressida and Henry did the only thing model students caught misbehaving can do: they threw out their badges and shouted 'Prefects! Prefects!'

*.

The rumours were true. Professor Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, slept with her hair set in curlers under a frilly pink bonnet. The fact that said hair, during daylight hours, was straight as a pin and imprisoned in a bun so tight it brought a whole new meaning to the phrase "wound up" seemed to have no bearing on the situation. Nor did it seem to impair her ability to threaten Death By Eyebrow with one scathing glance. 'Mr Filch,' she said in icy tones, 'will you kindly release Miss Bailey and Mr Berbroke? I believe those shackles are quite against policy.'

'But I've caught 'em!' Filch cried. 'I've caught 'em out and now I gets to –'

'Let them go,' McGonagall intoned with all the flexibility of an iron corset. 'They are prefects Mr Filch, assigned to patrol the corridors during the night.' From somewhere inside the voluminous tartan dressing gown a pocket-watch was produced, and the professor peered down her nose at the time. 'A wee bit past their scheduled hours,' she added with a Look, which had Cressida and Henry shifting nervously and rattling their chains, 'but I will be happy to deal with that.'

'But they're out of bed!' Filch cried. 'I seen 'em – in the library! Stealing books!'

'These are students, Mr Filch,' McGonagall said, taking pity on the poor man – after all, he really was rather new to the job. 'We couldn't give them away books. The key to these manacles, if you please. There's a good man –' She broke off as something crashed mightily one storey down. 'Probably just Peeves,' she began, but was interrupted by a muffled shout that sounded nothing like the poltergeist. Filch's eyes lit with gross glee, and McGonagall snapped a finger at him. 'You,' she said, 'block the exits.' Filch snapped a smart salute and charged into the night. 'As for you two,' McGonagall said, whirling in an impressive swirl of plaid. For a moment Cressida and Henry cowered together, waiting for the pain. And then they heard the silvery clink of a key opening a lock. Looking up, they found McGonagall smiling in a way Dirty Harry would have found very worrisome. 'You've just been deputised.'

*.

Saturday night, and all alone…

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy Porpington angled before the mirror and adjusted his ruff, turning this way and that to test the effect of white lace against, well…white everything else. That was sort of how it went when you were a ghost. White. Floating. Forever. The best you could do was hope that you – pardon the pun – kicked it whilst wearing matching shoes.

But really, he thought, giving his hair a toss and watching the world spin like a top as his head followed suit, was that any reason to lower one's standards? Now he twisted this way and that to test the effect of the three-centimetre strip of skin that was holding his nearly severed head onto the rest of his body. And that was stress on the nearly. Even viewing things upside down didn't diminish the cruelty, the epidermal effrontery – not so very great in distance, but monumental in significance – of that tiny strip of skin. That three centimetres should rob him of the glory of being headless seemed so heartlessly unfair. In the distance the sound of thundering hooves and hunting horns was briefly broken by a long, pronounced – and very much alive – scream. Sir Nicholas glowered at his reflection: they could keep their blasted Hunt all to themselves. Nothing but a bunch of pompous sots – hardly the sort of company he would keep, even if they had invited him to join in. But they did sound as if they were having such fun…well, everyone except whoever that was doing the screaming. It really was most rude. Which meant he should probably go and tell them so. With a last glower at the bane of his post-existence, Nick restored his head to his neck and readjusted his ruff.

Everyone knew life was unfair. But death had turned out to be a real bitch, and he just couldn't reconcile himself to it.

*.

It was quiet now. Too quiet.

Wand tip held even with her nose, Minerva McGonagall swept her gaze up and down the corridor, noting the toppled suit of armour and the faint cries of the Headless Hunt in the distance. Tricky, very tricky…The two snivelling prefects had been dispatched to prowl the Great Hall, and she could hear Filch and Peeves battling things out with what sounded like the commemorative millennial school china (it was a bit heavier than the quincentennial set, and gave such a satisfying crash when thrown), but that was normal. What wasn't normal was the absolute stillness she sensed everywhere else. She'd spent enough time as a cat to know the feeling, and it wasn't one you usually got with humans. It was the silence of the moment right before you pounced, when all the little mice were palpitating against the floorboards, tiny rodent brains incapable of processing more than abject terror as they made the decision – stay or run, stay or run, stay or –

A door slammed somewhere in the distance, followed by the pounding of feet. Minerva smiled.

Pounce.

*.

Neither Noel Riley of Hufflepuff nor Mordred Grimsley of Slytherin saw the two figures streak silently past them in the darkened corridor. They also, by some miracle, missed the stench that passed immediately after at ankle-height. It was possible that they were deeply immersed in their prefect-ly duties. It was more likely that they were making the most of their educational opportunities by getting their hands inside one another's robes.

'Preeeefeeects!'

The shout echoed up through the floor and down through the hall and probably all around the castle. Noel and Mordred separated at the mouth with an audible pop and stood staring at one another in horror. 'Idiot Hufflepuff,' Mordred sneered after a moment of breathless blinking.

'Slimy Slytherin git,' Noel snarled back.

'Same time next week?'

'Cheers.'

*.

'I'm sure there's someone here,' McGonagall said, pacing up and down the Charms corridor. 'I'm sure of it.'

'Er, professor…'

'No, Miss Riley, you may not be excused.' Noel's mouth snapped closed. 'I want every corridor checked – something funny is going on, and we are going to get to the bottom of it. You and Mr Grimsley go and find Mr Filch. Tell him he's to question the portraits about what they've seen. You won't be of any use there, so keep patrolling – you'll find something. Eventually.'

Noel and Mordred wasted no time in sprinting off towards the main stairwell. McGonagall prodded a few paintings with her wand, but the politest response she received was, 'bugger off!' She decided that she would leave the task to Filch – one waft of his halitosis, and anything with a finish to protect would be giving it up like a schoolgirl on May Day.

At the moment things were looking decidedly pear-shaped, and it was a view Minerva McGonagall wasn't precisely used to. But she would catch whoever was causing all this ruckus. And she jolly well hoped it would be a Slytherin.

*.

'Sirius,' Ze said a short while later. 'We are sitting in a chandelier.'

Sirius wiped a bit of soot off his face and grimaced. 'Yes, well, we were supposed to be a bit further from the, er, explosion.'

'Ah – I see. So that Bouncing Badger was supposed to go off after you'd taken it out of your pocket?'

Sirius shifted uncomfortably, disturbed by more than the scathing tone: he was fairly certain there was now candle wax in a place no candle wax should ever be. 'Something like that,' he mumbled. 'But don't worry, I'll get us down.'

*.

'You cut the rope!' Sirius hissed a half hour later. 'You cut the bloody rope!'

'It was about to go up in flames anyway,' Ze pointed out. 'And really, McGonagall and Filch were looking completely the other way. Speaking of which, well done with the herd of antelope.'

'Thanks. But you still cut the bloody rope!'

'You're really going to have to let that go,' she sighed breezily, sliding around a corner and immediately dropping to the floor. 'Oh – shit – prefects –'

*.

The broom cupboard was, predictably, dark. It was also musty, dusty, and pretty much any other word ending in –usty a person with mops on the mind could come up with. For atmosphere, there were brooms – also dusters, buckets, industrial-supply gloves, and a concentrated soap that smelled atomically of lemons. Some of the junk was even in crates, as though someone might, someday, get around to using it. Mostly, however, it was in heaps. Heaps of mops. Mountains of ancient rags. Piles of reinforced steel soap containers and stacks of buckets leaning drunkenly about. It could have been – possibly even was – a room the size of a quidditch pitch, but it was so full of stuff that the mind stopped measuring distances roughly an arm's-length from the end of the nose.

To Ze and Sirius, it was a little piece of heaven.

Just outside the door a war council was being held. 'There were two of them,' the voice of Myles Thistlethwait, fifth year Gryffindor prefect, was saying breathlessly. 'Katie and I chased them all the way –'

'We caught them up in the Trophy Room!' This time it was Cressida Bailey who spoke. 'If it hadn't been for that, er, momentary distraction, we would have caught them, too.'

Ze and Sirius turned to look at one another. 'Trophy Room?' they mouthed.

'Yes, yes,' McGonagall said, 'but where were they –'

'I think they were heading for the Hufflepuff common room, professor,' came the cool, deep voice of Mordred Grimsley.

'They were not!' Noel Riley cried indignantly. 'When we saw them they were definitely on their way to the dungeons!

Ze and Sirius were now looking very confused: at no point in the evening had they gone near either the Hufflepuff common room, or the dungeons. Which could only mean –

'But you all chased them directly to this corridor?'

There was a shuffling of feet: anyone with a blind caterpillar's grasp of the topography of Hogwarts would known that this was, technically, impossible.

'Yes.'

'And then you lost them?' McGonagall's interrogation continued.

There was a long pause. 'Er…' a girl's voice – presumably the mysterious Katie's, said. 'Well…it was actually a little bit ago…'

'Ah. So they could be anywhere by now.' Ze had the nervous feeling that McGonagall was using The Eyebrow. 'Well, thank you so much for your help. Mr Filch, you take the corridors towards the Ravenclaw dormitory –'

'I doubt any Ravenclaw's are out of bounds,' Henry sniffed. 'I don't-'

'Mr Berbroke, whoever they are they must by now know that we're onto them – therefore, they are likely to run for their den. Therefore, we will cut them off at the pass. As it were,' McGonagall hastily added. 'I will take the corridors in the direction of the dungeons. The six of you will patrol this corridor – if they have made it this far then they are hiding, and you will catch them when they attempt to leave. Am I clear?'

There was a petulant chorus of "yes, miss"es, and then the sound of footsteps retreating. Once they had faded to nothing, someone just outside the door sighed. 'We'll take this end, the two of you can have that. Grimsely and Riley can bugger off down to the stairwell and keep watch for Filch and McGonagall.'

'I don't want to be stuck with that tosspot again,' Noel pleaded.

'Like I want to work with you either, you stupid slag,' Mordred replied venomously.

'Oh, just try to get your trousers up by the time the teachers come back,' Katie said impatiently. There was more muttering, but two pairs of footsteps departed.

'Two sickles says they're snogging before they get to the end of the corridor.'

'Oh like anyone's going to take that bet.'

'Think we'll catch anyone?' Myles asked.

'I certainly hope not,' Henry said darkly. 'Come on Cress.'

They listened as four more pairs of footsteps departed, moving much more lethargically. Ze expelled a shaky breath she'd been holding for what felt like hours as Sirius collapsed, half atop her, against the door. 'Do you think he's out there, with them?' she asked, ignoring that fact that both of them stank of sweat, smoke and worse, and dropping her forehead against his shoulder.

Sirius, his own forehead resting against the wood just beside Ze's ear, shook his head. 'No – haven't heard any screams. I think the dungbombs might've finally thrown him off the scent.'

This had her heaving a massive sigh of relief. She didn't care if McGonagall caught her. She didn't even care if it was Filch. But that cat…that cat was not normal. They had been running for hours, ducking, weaving, hiding, lying and while they had managed to avoid the ever-growing group of humans on their trail, Popsy had been barely a step behind. Ze would rather face down the Headless Hunt or – Merlin forbid – professors Aurora and Biggerton-Wollop mid-coitus in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom again than have one more go with that blasted cat. He had chased them through every imaginable room and passage, cornered them in two classrooms, interrupted their break-in (for supply purposes, honestly!) at Filch's office, and had disappeared only minutes before when they'd attracted the notice of at least one pair of prefects. It was enough to make her want to crawl into Sirius's lap and curl up in a small, whimpering ball. And now it was looking like she might have a chance to do just that…

But suddenly he was pulling away from her and spinning around. 'I hate broom cupboards,' Sirius muttered, giving a crate a vicious kick.

Or perhaps not.

There was a surprisingly human-sounding grunt as the crate scraped across the floor, and Ze gave Sirius a speculative look. 'What did that soap ever do to you?'

'Besides eat a hole through my hand in three seconds flat the first time I was on a cleaning detention? Sirius snarled back. 'Absolutely nothing!'

She paused to give this some thought. 'Fair enough,' she said, and gave the crate a good kicking herself. It grunted again as it scraped further into the gloom, and Ze stifled a yawn as she turned back to Sirius. 'What?' she asked when she found him staring.

'Er…you just kicked the soap,' he pointed out.

'Well, yes. It ate a hole through your hand. I'd say it deserved it.'

She looked so mutinous and vindictive that Sirius could barely stop himself from covering her face in kisses. She was just so lovely. And standing so close to her was bloody murder… She probably wouldn't take much prodding. The thought hit him like a kidney punch, and he felt his breathing bottom out. Because it was dead right: what with it being dark and smelling clean and all that, this place practically felt like heaven. And it was a broom cupboard – everyone knew what happened in broom cupboards. Really, there was only one thing that sent a boy and a girl ducking through the door – and it wasn't a desperate need to scrub the toilet with a toothbrush. But this would call for finesse, and subtlety, and probably sensitivity as well. Abandoning his slouch by the door he brought himself two steps closer (alright, one step and one hobble, thanks to a particularly sneaky bucket), and leaned suavely against the wall, giving Ze the chance to admire his sleek and manly physique.

Ze, who had been contemplating the virtues of physical contact with Sirius (comforting, warm, reminiscent of Life Without Popsy) versus the vices (well, frankly, the smell), glanced up as he got closer. Her eyes, Sirius noticed, went directly to his chest. That's right – she had a bit of a thing for his pectoral muscles, didn't she? Well, perhaps now was the ideal time to play up on that little bit of –

'I've been meaning to ask you,' she said, not realising she was overthrowing a positively masterful seduction, 'where you got that shirt.'

Sirius was completely stymied. He'd been dredging up a charming comment, the sort that swept a woman off her feet (and preferably onto a bed) and she'd decided to discuss sartorial purchases. For a good ten seconds he could only stare at her, open-mouthed. And for the ten seconds after that, he could only stare, equally blankly, at his own chest. 'Ummmm….'

'It's just that Adidas is, well, it's sort of a muggle brand, isn't it? I mean, I've never seen it in any wizard shops and I just wondered –'

'I got it when I was a kid.'

The statement, uttered in a gentle, fond, and somehow achingly sad voice, stopped the stream of babble completely. 'Really?'

The nod was slow, the smile even slower, and when it had finished spreading across his face she could have sworn she melted. It was just like the day he'd told her he adored her: completely beyond her control, her body went warm and squashy. Before she knew it she was sliding down the wall to sit with her back against it, her knees bumping into a nearby crate. Sirius, not seeming to notice that the movement had been involuntary, slid down to sit next to her.

All thoughts of seduction were gone completely out of his head, and he barely noticed as their bodies bumped together. 'I was nine,' he murmured, rubbing the hem of the shirt between his fingers. 'My cousin Andromeda – do you remember her? She was head girl, our first year.'

Ze smiled, remembering Andromeda Black as impossibly clever, impossibly tall, and impossibly old. Funny, to think that she herself was now just as tall and just as old, if slightly less clever. 'Yeah,' she sighed. 'I remember her.'

'When her mum would come to visit my mum, she always came along and most of the time she got stuck with me,' Sirius continued, the smile still curling his lips. 'One afternoon my mum and Auntie Druella went off to some smart tea and it was just us in the house. Andromeda had a boyfriend who was muggle-born, and – well, my family is shit, basically, so she hadn't told anyone. But since it was just me and her, she said that if I promised not to tell I could go with her into muggle London to meet him. Of course I was really excited – I'd never been anywhere besides "acceptable" homes and Diagon Alley – and I thought it was the coolest thing, sneaking out in the middle of the day.'

It was incredible, imagining Sirius Black at age nine, sneaking out of a house that, in Ze's imagination, was a gargoyle-encrusted fortress guarded by dragons. She could just see the tiny face lighting up with wonder and – yes – mischief as he began what was to be a long and illustrious career of breaking the rules. 'I bet you went mad when you saw all the people,' she chuckled.

'I couldn't believe it! They all looked so funny, dressed up in suits and dresses and no hats on - and electricity! It was amazing – people doing all those things, making all those machines, because they don't have magic. Ted – that's Andromeda's boyfriend – was really cool about it though – her bringing me along, I mean. He had a brother and so he got me some proper clothes to wear and we went everywhere. Together.' The look on his face was so wondrous and wistful that Ze felt her heart crack slightly. It was clear that family outings were not high on the list of House of Black priorities. 'I looked just like all the other kids, except I think I kept acting funny because I didn't understand how anything worked but…it was just…amazing,' he gabbled, grinning. 'The entire day, I'd never seen anything like it. And I realised that my parents were dead wrong – I'd never really liked them before, but now I could see that they were just stupid. They think muggles are filth, rubbish, unfit to exist, and they'd been pounding it into me since the day I was born. But all it took was one day to see that they were wrong. And it was the best day of my entire life, except for Hogwarts. The very best day.'

His grin widened slightly. 'We got into loads of trouble, of course, for going out without telling anyone. But Andromeda told everyone that she'd taken me to Diagon Alley because I'd been right little ass and wouldn't leave her alone until she agreed. I don't think her mum believed her, but mine did, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. And Ted let me keep the shirt.' He stroked a hand lightly over the material. 'He said I ought to have something to wear when I got tired of dresses.'

Ze laughed, but even as she did she realised something rather interesting: 'I don't think I've ever seen you wear robes – apart from the school ones, I mean.'

'I don't. I quit wearing them that year – my mum had fits. She couldn't believe she had a kid who wanted to dress like a filthy muggle – bad enough, she said, that they put us in muggle uniforms at Hogwarts. She thinks its just Dumbledore, catering to the muggle-borns, making them feel more at home. Maybe it is,' he shrugged. 'I don't care – I like trousers. There isn't as much of a draught.'

Still chuckling, Ze shook her head. 'I'm just surprised you can still squeeze into that shirt – you're a bit bigger now than you were at nine.'

'It fits,' he said indignantly. 'Maybe not well,' he admitted when she gave the body-skimming material a sceptical look. 'But it fits. And it's too special to ever throw out,' he added quietly.

Ze had to quite literally bite her tongue to keep the words from spewing out. To keep from telling him that she knew, that she'd known how important the shirt was to him before she'd ever known why. To keep from telling him that, though Grace hadn't quite got around to chucking it out, she hadn't been the one to give it back, either. But saying all that wouldn't do her any good – not to mention it would probably make her look like a total freak.

'I think Grace wanted it because she knew it was important to me.'

Oh piss, I haven't been talking out loud again, have I?

'I didn't just give it to her,' he was saying, kicking his feet slightly against the crate before them. 'She asked me for it, the first summer we were…together. She said she wanted something of mine, to wear when I wasn't around.' He shook his head slowly. 'I tried to give her one of my quidditch shirts, but she turned it down, said she wanted this one. It's funny though – I don't think she ever wore it. When she…when she returned it, it still smelled like me.'

Since Sirius happened to smell quite nice – faintly of soap and rain and shadows – Ze could understand Grace not wanting to sully the scent. 'Maybe she was keeping it back, in case of an emergency,' she suggested.

'Like what,' Sirius scoffed, 'me moving to Antarctica? She's not like you, Ze – not even a little.' He shook his head and laughed, but there was only a trace of bitterness now. 'If it was her that was with me tonight, she'd be furious with me –'

'I'm sorry Sirius,' Ze said, shutting her eyes, unable to believe that she hadn't apologised before now. 'I really never meant for this to happen – I know we're in loads of trouble, even if we don't get caught and, well, look, the thing is, I can't really imaging sneaking around without you so of course I came to get you, but, um…I just, well, I thought you might want to see the passageway yourself, you know? Because you're keen on that sort of thing and I thought you might like it and I really didn't mean for it to turn out like this –'

Sirius didn't care if he was supposed to wait for her to figure it out. He had to kiss her, had to touch her somehow, and the best way of doing it was undoubtedly sliding his mouth right over hers and finally finding out how she would taste and whether her hands would fist in his shirt or slide through his hair or –

A muffled curse drifted through the door and, seconds later, there came the unmistakable sound of someone scrabbling with the latch. 'Fuck!' Ze hissed, diving sideways and grabbing the corner of an ancient dustcover. Sirius's mouth, which had been closing in on hers, narrowly missed colliding with her shoulder. With a flourish that sent a century's worth of fluff pillowing into the air, she jerked the cloth over her and Sirius and crouched low. Beside her, something clattered to the ground and then silenced itself rapidly.

Trying desperately not to inhale for fear of asphyxiation, Sirius groped for Ze's shoulder in the sudden dark and, when he'd found it, put his mouth right up against her ear. 'Don't –'

But he never got to finish, because the door had popped open and, half a second later, closed again. There was a person inside – 'Ssshh!'

Hm. Make that two people.

'I thought we were dead back there!'

Two people, at least of whom was female. And giggled. Beside him Ze shifted slightly, and if he could have seen her face he would have realised that she looked positively puzzled. And quite suspicious. 'Not more prefects,' he breathed against her ear. 'Please Merlin…'

'Do you think they saw us?' the male voice asked, low and distorted.

'Do you care?' the female replied coyly. Moments later they heard the soft, damp sounds of a deep kiss, and then a rustle and a faint but definitely libidinous chuckle.

Ze's eyes narrowed: she had had quite enough of that for the evening. 'Oi!' she hissed, her voice piercing the dark like a knife. 'Despite the decorative ambiance, this is not a Las Vegas honeymoon suite!'

On the other side of the crate barrier two bodies jerked in surprise, upsetting a pile of buckets. 'What the –' someone hissed, but the words were barely audible over the clattering of metal against stone.

'Maybe you should make a little more noise – I don't think they heard you in the village,' another voice snarled out of the darkness.

'Zeke?'

'Clive?!'

'Ze?'

'What the bloody hell,' Sirius hissed, 'is going on?'

Ze was already stood up, peering over the low barrier of crates and staring down at Clive, who had Claudia clasped to his side for dear life. 'What're you doing here?'

'What're you doing here?'

'Clive, did you know she was he-' Claudia began.

'Ze, why've you got a book?'

'Zeke?' Sirius repeated, this time certain of who he was hearing, fighting his way out from under the dustcover to see the stocky form of the Gryffindor beater crouching behind a handy stack of mops. 'What're yo-'

'Will you lot belt up before we all get caught!'

Everyone froze and turned, slowly, toward the furthest corner, from whence the latest voice had come. 'Alright,' Ze said in a low voice. 'Show of faces – how many people are in here?'

There was a long moment of silence, chock full of dirty little secrets. And then, from behind a box in the back corner, two people stood. 'Er…well…'

'Antonia!' Claudia cried, peering into the dark. 'I didn't realise you and Wentworth were together!'

The girl blushed and looked down bashfully. 'Just since yesterday.'

'Well done you,' Claudia gave her a conspiratorial little wink.

'Y-yes,' Wentworth stuttered, shifting nervously. 'V-very pleased w-w-with –' A clumsy elbow collided with another dust cloth, which proved to give quite a bit further than expected – almost as much as, say, a human stomach.

'Oi, watch where you're standing!' The dust cloth was jerked down to reveal a very red-faced girl who, in the face of everyone's gaping, tossed her hair. 'What?'

'Oh, Amanda, didn't realise!' Wentworth beamed, thrilled at the shift in attention. 'And is that Piers –'

'Er, no,' the boy beside her replied, sheepishly tugging the dustcover off his face and offering a handshake. 'Joshua – Joshua Humphries.'

Wentworth was looking blankly at Amanda, and Sirius decided that there were probably lapdogs with more cognitive aptitude. 'But I thought you dated Piers –'

'Lovely to meet you, Joshua!' Antonia trilled, thrusting a hand around Wentworth and skillfully elbowing him in the ribs.

Wentworth fell forward as though he'd been gutted, and caught himself on a pile of rags immediately in front of his feet. 'I say – who's under there –'

There was a moment of scuffling as the rags tried to remain very rag-like whilst fighting Wentworth off. And then, giving into the inevitable, there was a shudder and another couple climbed out of hiding. This one did come as a bit of a surprise, as Shylock de Lauer of Slytherin got to his feet, quickly followed by Nigel McCormick of Hufflepuff. Ten heads were put on one side as everyone stared, dumbfounded. 'We were studying,' de Lauer growled, searing a quick glare that said "and we could be studying your entrails in just a moment if you say one word" around the little circle.

Clive took one look at the mussed hair and loosened ties and nodded. 'Right.'

'Sweet Circe,' Ze muttered doing some rapid calculations. 'There are twelve people –'

'Fourteen, actually,' a voice interrupted, and a tall, gangling boy Sirius recognised from his Astronomy class poked his head out of a shadow.

'What, were you waiting for your cue?' Amanda muttered.

'No,' a girl's voice snapped, quickly followed by its owner's appearance in the light, wrapped in what were most definitely the boy's robes. 'We were here first. Incidentally,' she said to Zeke, 'if you could pass me my top…'

'Fourteen people,' Ze mumbled. 'In a broom cupboard.' Shaking her head she eyed the latest additions to the farce. 'How long have you been in here?'

The boy – Martin? Matthew? – shrugged. 'I dunno – since we left supper?'

All the other boys looked suitably impressed. 'We did talk for awhile first,' the girl informed them snappishly, snatching the proffered shirt from Zeke's hand. 'And we looked at the stars.'

'I remember when we used to do that,' someone sighed wistfully, and Ze thought it might have been Nigel McCormick.

Clive was looking back and forth from Ze to Sirius. 'I didn't know the two of you were -'

'We're not,' Ze said quickly.

'Oh, right,' Wentworth sniggered. 'Like the whole school doesn't know you're -'

'No, really, we're not.' This time the interruption was as sharp and flat as a razor – and infinitely more dangerous. Even Wentworth had the sense to shut his gob. 'No one needs to know why anyone else is here,' Sirius said calmly. 'Although I don't see why it always has to be a broom cupboard,' he added in an undertone. 'Worst place to shag in the history of splinters.'

'An element of danger makes amorous encounters more exciting and novel, and helps keep a relationship strong,' Antonia informed him in a sing-song voice. 'Er, Witch Weekly,' she added sheepishly.

'I didn't know splinters rated as "an element of danger",' Ze muttered.

'I read that article too,' Claudia said, giving Ze a death glare before smiling warmly at her housemate.

'Me too – it was rubbish,' a third girl added, this time from just beside Zeke.

'Zeke, who's that?' Ze asked, peering into the dark.

As Sirius grinned, Zeke blushed and mumbled. 'Er, um, well – this is Riya Panjabi. Ri, Ze Meridian.'

'Hiya,' Ze grinned, reaching out a hand to shake. 'Welcome to the madness. We'll make friends later.'

'Looking forward to it,' Riya beamed back. By the door, Claudia steamed.

'So, how're we getting out of here?'

'How did you get in here,' Zeke asked Clive. 'There's prefects guarding both ends of the corridor –'

Claudia snorted derisively. 'You mean Bend-over Bailey and whoever that was she had in her claws?'

'Cressida's out there?' Antonia asked. 'Damn, we've been wasting our time thinking we were about to be caught –'

'No no no ,' Ze said, holding up her hands as Antonia made a move for the door. 'Look, it isn't just them, okay? McGonagall and Filch are out there too, plus about four more prefects.' She paused. 'All of whom seem to be having it off with surprisingly little regard for public decency, but still.'

'And don't forget Aurora and Biggerton-Wollop,' Sirius reminded her.

Ze's eyes slammed shut in horror: she would never, as long as she lived, be able to forget Aurora and Biggerton-Wollop. 'Right, them too,' she finally managed to agree. 'So that's six prefects, three professors and one – well, one of whatever Filch is.'

'And fourteen of us,' Amanda informed her in tones that said "you're not the only one who can do maths". 'What's your point?'

'Our point is that we need a plan,' Sirius said calmly, stepping up beside Ze. 'A well thought out, technically advanced one.'

Wentworth shifted nervously: plans were always part of someone else's responsibilities. 'And, er, what would that be?'

'Right,' Sirius said, 'here's what we're going to do…'

*.

'"One, two, three, go!"?' Ze panted furiously as she sprinted down he corridor alongside Sirius. 'That was your plan?'

'Just keep going!' *.

It is an unfortunate constant of life that, if you fervently wish for something not to happen, that something becomes exponentially more likely to land right on you like the proverbial pile of bricks. It may have something to do with the fact that thinking about things gives them more presence in the world. It may be that there really are butterflies that can cause typhoons. Or maybe the universe just likes a good joke.

Popsy was back.

Or maybe not back – maybe he'd known, in that way cats have of knowing, precisely where Ze and Sirius were going to end up, and had been waiting there all along. 'This really isn't normal,' Ze muttered.

'No, this is Hogwarts,' Sirius panted, bent double with his hands on his knees as he watched Popsy watching them.

Ze glanced around: they were completely alone…and that was pretty much the only advantage they had. When they'd burst out of the broom cupboard in a tidal wave of bodies, she had been hand in hand with Sirius as they had agreed before not to go directly to the common room – better, Ze had thought, to be hiding somewhere else than caught out at their own front door. Now she was wondering how wise that decision had been. They were in one of the highest wings, directly beside the door to the Astronomy tower – a close runner-up to the almighty broom cupboard in the Top Five Worst Places to Go With Your Chap contest. And then there was Popsy. 'What are the chances of getting by him?'

'Unharmed?'

'Er, preferably, yes.'

'Absolutely zero. You can probably catch fleas at a distance of ten yards.'

Ze gave the door to the Astronomy tower a contemplative look. And then she levelled one at Popsy. No contest. 'Alright then.'

'Alright – Ze, what are you –'

'I am going to watch the sunrise,' she replied, turning to glance over her shoulder from the doorway to the stairs. 'You coming?'

She disappeared, her footsteps spiralling upward. Sirius gave Popsy one last look. And gaped, gobsmacked, when Popsy closed his one remaining eye in what was unmistakably a wink. The mangy beast then proceeded to stand and saunter off into the darkness, his work here clearly done. Sirius turned back to the doorway. Yes, he thought dazedly, of course I bloody am.

*.

'We could blackmail about a hundred people after tonight.'

Sirius counted up in his head. 'More like twenty,' he chuckled. 'But yeah.' He had climbed after Ze to the very top of the tower and found her staring over the barricade at the night sky. The moon had set hours before, but the stars were still out and they had stared up at them in silence for what felt like years.

'There you are,' she had said at last, her head still tilted up toward the sky.

'Here I am,' he had agreed, and she had leaned her shoulder against him, smiling.

Eventually the night's exertions had taken their toll, and they soon found themselves collapsed on the central dais, leaning against the brace of the massive telescope as they slumped gently against one another in the pre-dawn chill. 'I hope you're not embarrassed.'

Sirius shifted slightly, and Ze's head dropped to his shoulder. 'Embarrassed?' he repeated, revelling in the contact.

'Having everyone hear about your shirt. Earlier.'

He honestly hadn't thought about it until this moment – and yes, he was embarrassed. But only a little. Alright, well, maybe more than a little. But not enough to matter. 'When people look back on that experience,' he said wryly, 'I doubt the first thing they'll remember is where Sirius Black got that grubby old shirt.'

'Mmmm,' she agreed, snuggling a little closer as her eyes drooped closed. 'I'm glad you told me though – it was a nice story.'

'It's a nice memory,' he said quietly. 'They're good people. Andromeda and Ted, I mean. They're married now – they've got a daughter.'

Ze smiled slightly, halfway to being asleep. 'What's she called?'

'Nymphadora,' came the reply, accompanied by a faint rumbling in his chest that might have been a chuckle. It shivered through Ze and made her eyes flutter, opening just enough to see that the stars were seeping back into the sky as morning drew closer. 'I've never met her.' Ze frowned, the statement tugging at her: she had loads of cousins, most of them living in far-flung places. But she'd met them all, even the ones not in England. 'I will though,' Sirius added, slipping his arm round her shoulder. 'Soon.'

She nodded, her hair brushing against his jaw, her cheek rubbing over his shoulder, and they sat watching the light spill into the world, staining the sky pink and picking the mountains out of the darkness. Soon the world was shot with gold, the faint blush reflecting in the water and off the castle walls, chasing toward the west and dimming out the stars.

'Good morning, Zenobia,' he murmured, the words floating upward in a delicate cloud of breath.

'Good morning, Sirius.'

*.

'All I'm saying is that technically we –'

'Padfoot!'

Sirius was stopped dead still in the door to the boys' seventh, brow furrowed as he took in the scene, eyes progressing slowly from the unkempt James to the unkempt Remus and finally to… 'Er…why's Pete tied to a chair?'

'Because he's out of the bet!' James informed him virtuously, and, when Remus cleared his throat in that slightly biting way only Remus had, added, 'and, er, we might have been just a wee bit bored.'

'Ah,' Sirius said, stepping into the room. 'Lovely.' Moving slowly to minimise the aches, he crossed to his bed, gradually becoming aware that his three friends were watching him – Peter over the top of a gag. 'What?'

'Well,' Remus began, 'putting aside, for the moment, the matter of the soot, the scorched eyebrow and the visible bruises, one might wonder where you've been all morning.'

'Or all night,' James grinned, waggling his eyebrows. Sirius, knowing precisely what James was insinuating, arched his own brows – a great deal less enthusiastically – in reply. 'Bruises, right, not a romance then,' James sighed. 'The eyebrow is quite dashing though.'

'Thanks,' Sirius murmured with wry amusement.

'Still haven't answered the question,' Remus said silkily from just over his shoulder.

'You could interrogate for England, Moony,' Sirius sighed as he sank onto the welcome softness of his mattress. 'And, before you get out the inscrutable gaze and the eyebrow, I spent the night well out of bounds, behaving myself badly, in a series of increasingly unfortunate events. And we need to update the Map.'

'Update?!' James cried, forgetting that there was a most venerable inquisition in progress. 'You can't mean you've found a new p-'

'Passage, yes. Library. Loads of stairs. Guarded by an absolutely mental knight armed with Hogwarts, A History. Got me right on the arm.' He pointed to a large and rapidly purpling bruise on his bicep.

'Beware the quiet ones,' Remus murmured. 'Even I didn't know that was there.'

'How'd you find it?' James asked, and Sirius smiled slightly, in thanks for James not adding "and why didn't you take me?"

'It's sort of a long story –' he began, but was interrupted by the door to the dormitory bursting open and slamming against the wall.

'He's out!' Rob crowed, dragging Zeke behind him by the arm.

'Let me go you stupid git –' Zeke was hurled into the centre of the room and skidded to a stop beside Peter. 'What're you in for?' he asked the smaller boy, taking in the chair, the gag, and the ridiculously thick ropes. Peter rolled his eyes to the heavens and sighed heavily. 'Ah, me too,' Zeke nodded.

'Ezekiel is officially back in the world of the wankers!' Rob was saying gleefully.

'I am not! I am officially back in the world of the snoggers, which is more than you'll ever be able to say, you –'

'Children, children,' said Uncle Remus gently. 'Shall we be civilised about this, hm?' Rob scratched his armpit and shrugged. 'I shall take that as a somewhat conflicted yes,' Remus murmured. 'Now, we have already established that Peter has also…reneged on his word, but we'll present that evidence later. What, Ezekiel, have you allegedly done?'

'There's nothing alleged about it,' Zeke informed him. 'I've met someone – Riya Panjabi. She's my girlfriend,' he added, glowering at Rob. 'Or, she will be, as soon as you lot finish with your games and I can get down to the Hall to ask her.'

'You have a girlfriend? What, already?' James gaped.

'I've known her for awhile,' Zeke mumbled, clearly uncomfortable with the prying. 'She's my year, Hufflepuff, brilliant at Herbology.'

'Sounds grand – congratulations,' Sirius said sincerely.

'Thanks,' Zeke grinned in return. And then his head tilted on one side. 'Oi, why aren't you in here?' he gestured between himself and Peter. 'If I'm out, you definitely are!'

'What?' Everyone, even Peter, chorused.

'No!' Sirius cried. 'You've –'

'So there was something going on –' James beamed.

'Sirius, is there something you would like to –'

'There is nothing I would like to tell you!' Sirius shouted. 'I am not doing anything with Ze!'

'Bollocks!' Zeke cried. 'The two of you were cuddled up like kittens, telling soppy stories. And then you ran off hand in hand!'

Everyone stared back and forth between Zeke and Sirius. 'What, exactly, happened last night?'

Sirius answered Remus with a sigh and a rub of his eyes. 'Ze and I went to the Library and, well, the basic story is that we spent most of the night being chased by vigilantes and ended up in a broom cupboard with Zeke. But we were not cuddling. Or telling soppy stories,' he added indignantly: the episode regarding the shirt was poignant and very moving. Soppy, his arse.

'Look, there is only one reason anyone goes into a broom cupboard and that is –'

'To hide,' Sirius snapped. 'From McGonagall and Filch and the prefects' chapter of Nymphomaniacs Anonymous.' He stood and faced down Rob, who was still making noises. 'Nothing happened .' There was an extremely tense moment, and Sirius was bracing himself for violence, when Peter's exertions started gaining notice.

Slowly, one by one, every head turned to see that Peter was wriggling and jumping, making emphatic noises and trying to move his chair. 'Eh?' Zeke asked, bending down.

'Mmghghghgh! Mmmmeghghghghghgh!'

'Oh!' Remus said with sudden understanding. 'Of course – the parchment!'

James was already spinning around and reaching for the scroll tacked up on the wall. 'Pete noticed it, just after he told us he was out,' James explained as he brought the most holy document over. 'See, your name goes red when you've broken the rules. Look – there's Allister, and Pete, and Zeke,' he pointed to each name, now a brilliant tomato red. 'And here's Sirius,' he added, his finger stopping beside Sirius's signature, still written in staid, definite black. 'Unsnogged and unhappy.'

'Thanks mate,' Sirius sighed. 'Kind of you to remind me.'

James grinned at him, but Zeke was shaking his head. 'I don't get it – you really looked like you were –'

Remus rammed an elbow into his gut, having taken in the fierce blush rising in Sirius's face. 'Not the time,' he hissed.

'Right,' Zeke mumbled back, massaging his ribs.

Rob turned to Peter, grinning widely. 'So, who'd you get your hands on then? Happen in Hogsmeade?'

Peter blushed. 'Eeehhh,' Zeke chuckled, 'must be someone he doesn't want us to know about.'

'Dorcas!' Rob shouted gleefully.

Peter emphatically shook his head, his eyes narrowing dangerously. 'Chelsea Winks?' Zeke guessed.

Another shake of the head. Rob and Zeke looked puzzled, and Remus took pity on them. 'To use the venerable old phrase, he cared for his magical creature.'

There was a long moment of silence. Peter's eyes darted nervously around the room and the tips of his ears went brilliantly pink. And then Rob shrugged. 'There's worse ways to pass the time.'

'And all that reeling must've been murder,' Zeke agreed, reaching over to pull Peter's gag down.

'I'll never do a high-step again,' was the first vow out of Peter's mouth.

Rob clapped his hands and the rubbed them together, grinning evilly. 'The only question is, what're you lovely gents going to have to do as penance?'

Remus stepped forward, a martial light in his eyes. 'Now, let's see…'

Sirius started forward to join the circle – the sooner they decided, the sooner he could get some sleep – but James grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. 'What –'

'All night in a broom cupboard with her? Well?' James prodded, grinning madly. 'Sounds like you're getting closer – cuddling and all.'

Sirius couldn't help smiling as he remembered how lovely it had been, snuggled up with Ze atop the Astronomy tower with the day quietly breaking around them. Having a bottom that was completely numb thanks to prolonged contact with frigid stone was worth it, no question. He could still smell her – hints of smoke, aged cheese and sweat – on his clothes. But, delightful as it was, he felt completely off balance. When the sun had risen fully up and they'd heard the castle stirring below, Ze hadn't squeezed his hand or kissed his cheek or given any indication that he had been anything other than a convenient pillow. She'd just stood, stretched, and yawned at him before suggesting that they go find their beds. Smile crumpling, he shook his head. 'I have no idea,' he murmured. 'I'm her friend, James – that's all. I wish it wasn't, but…she just doesn't see me as anything else.'

James frowned. Sirius was looking completely dejected, not to mention like he'd been through the mill, and James thought it was entirely possible that his emotional receptors weren't broadcasting properly. 'She came and got you out of bed last night, yeah?' Sirius glanced up, shrugged, nodded. 'Just you – not any of the rest of us, yeah?'

Sirius, seeing where this was going, sighed. 'Prongs –'

'No, Sirius, listen to me. I know I'm hardly the voice of experience, given the way Lily currently feels about me, but I think you're ignoring some very good signs. She doesn't punch you. Or hex you. Or growl when you sit down beside her. And she smiles at you. That's something.'

Sirius shook his head, looking over to where Remus was saying, 'Yes, but if they sing it together -'

'Yeah it's something,' he murmured. 'The question is, what?'

*.

'You missed Zeke and Peter singing "A Cauldron Full of Love" just now,' Lily said as she dropped onto Ze's bed.

'Really?' Ze jerked up, praying fervently that Lily hadn't seen her shoving the Montague book under her pillow. She knew that she was already facing a bit of an interview – after all, she'd stumbled into the dormitory at half eight in the morning, fallen into bed with her clothes on, and proceeded to snore her way through the rest of the day. When she'd finally woken, it had been to find the rest were gone down to dinner. Not feeling particularly hungry, she'd settled for having a shower and returning to bed where she'd taken advantage of the privacy to have a look at the book she and Sirius had pinched the night before.

'Yeah, their harmonies were awful, but they got all the words right,' Lily was saying, this bit of information followed by a pregnant pause. 'What're you reading?' she finally asked, tilting her head to try to catch sight of the spine as Ze desperately shoved the book further under her pillow, trying to look nonchalant.

'Ah…just something for History of Magic.'

Slender red brows arched delicately. 'We haven't got anything due for Binns for weeks.'

'I like being prepared,' Ze said, crossing her fingers for forgiveness for such a flagrant lie. 'Anyway, Peter and Ze-ze-zeeeeke,' she said on a long yawn.

'Someone's knackered,' Lily murmured innocently, twirling a lock of hair round her finger.

Ze nodded through the end of the yawn. 'I had a bit of a long night.'

'I'll say, considering you were out of bed for most of it.' The tone was still sweetly innocent, but there was something simmering in those sharp green eyes…

'If I say "But you were asleep when I left!" are you going to reply with "Justice never sleeps!"?'

Lily grinned. 'If I could keep a straight face long enough to say it, probably. No, Dorcas's light kept me up, and I heard you leave just before Grace got back.'

Preparing to distract Lily with a tangent on Dorcas's new sleeping arrangements, Ze froze utterly at this bit of news. 'Grace? How…soon after I left?'

The grin was disappearing and Lily's eyes were narrowing again. 'I dunno, ten minutes, maybe? Why?'

Ze opened her mouth to say "no reason" and promptly shut it again. She and Lily, in some strange and unexpected way, had become friends. And Lily was clever, so clever that she'd probably already worked out where Ze and been all night and who she had been with. And lastly, there was the fact that Ze…well, she wanted to tell someone. She didn't feel quite the same as she had before last night, but she didn't know how to explain it… 'I went to get Sirius and we…went out,' she said, not quite meeting Lily's eyes as she spoke. 'I was just wondering if she might have seen us leaving.'

'Tsk tsk, out of bounds,' Lily said, but there was little humour in it as the redhead settled back against the bedpost. If she wanted to ask Ze any probing questions regarding Sirius and nocturnal activities, she resisted most nobly. But when Ze volunteered no information of her own, Lily decided it was time to cast her line. 'I would say it was about ten minutes between your leaving and her coming up the stairs. She didn't say anything, just went to the toilet and got into bed. She stayed awake awhile though – I don't know if it was because of Dorcas, or because of something else, but she tossed and turned for an hour or so.'

Ze chewed her lip. 'She doesn't like me.'

'No, she doesn't. And if she spotted you sneaking out with her chap – even if he's technically not anymore,' she added when Ze's head came up, 'she still thinks of him as such…Look, Grace isn't nice, okay? I know you think you've got that sorted, but she isn't someone to cross. I'm not saying she's going to go stabbing you in your bed, but she's not above stabbing you in your back, your front, or dead in your eye if the mood strikes her.'

It was Ze's turn for narrowed eyes. 'Are you warning me off?'

'No! Not at all – I just…' Lily frowned and plucked at the fringe on Ze's curtains. 'Look, you're clever enough to see her for what she is, so whatever's coming won't be a surprise, right?'

'What do you mean "whatever's coming" –'

'I don't know, Zaz,' Lily said, throwing her hands up. 'I just – she isn't the sort to let it go, is she?' They spent a long moment staring at one another, Ze desperately trying to understand whatever it was Lily was telling her, and missing it completely. Finally Lily shook her head, sending her hair flying. 'Let's talk about something else, shall we? Something like…' she trailed off mischievously, 'like say, Sirius Black.'

Ze, recognising the glimmer in Lily's eye, groaned. 'There's really nothing – '

'Nothing? You spent most of yesterday with him, in spite of the fact you were supposed to be out with Colin, and then you went and met him for some clandestine night-time adventure,' Lily cried. 'You cannot tell me –'

'Lily,' Ze sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, 'I didn't actually spend most of yesterday with Sirius, okay? We…well…look, the truth is we had a blazing row in the village, and took ourselves off for a sulk and it was hours before I saw him again, and then we had to do the apologising, and… Well, everything's back to normal, but yesterday definitely wasn't mine and Sirius's best moment as friends.'

Lily digested this, and finally repeated, 'As…friends?'

Ze flopped back onto her bed, thwacking her head neatly against the book stashed under her pillow as she went, grimacing at the very thought of the blasted thing. 'I'm surprised he still is my friend, after some of the things I said…'

'Ze,' Lily began delicately, 'if you don't mind my asking, er…what, precisely, did you and Sirius fight about?'

There was a long moment of Ze squirming internally and just a bit externally. 'We...' she licked her lips. 'Well, it was…' she tried clearing her throat. 'The thing is -' but the words simply wouldn't come out. She wanted to tell Lily, wanted to explain everything that had happened between her and Colin and then her and Sirius, wanted to explain why those events had sent her charging around Hogwarts after dark with Sirius and wanted to explain why that had her feeling very mixed up indeed. Why it had ended with her half-sleeping against Sirius at dawn, and loving every moment. And the bizarre nature of the circumstances was only compounded by what she'd just read in that book…

'If you really don't want to say –'

'I turned Colin Cross into a frog.'

This time the silence positively had texture to it. Lily blinked. Then she swallowed. Then she looked around the dormitory to ensure they were alone and said, 'What?'

'Colin Cross,' Ze repeated glumly. 'I turned him into a frog. That's why our date ended. It was an accident,' she added when she saw Lily's expression.

'I should hope not! That sort've transfiguration is just the thing we're supposed to be learning.'

The statement surprised a giggle out of Ze, whether it was supposed to or not. 'I didn't transfigure him,' she explained. 'I – well – I kissed him.'

'Yes, you'd already said –'

'No, I mean I kissed him, and he turned into a frog. Just like that – kiss, frog.' Ze sat back and waved her hands. 'No wishing involved, no spells, no bad intentions whatsoever. Just a kiss.'

'Ze, there must've been something else – '

'You can ask Sirius if you don't believe me – he was there when I turned Colin back.' Lily mouthed "turned Colin back" and Ze ploughed on. 'It was like something out of, I dunno, Snow White – completely mad, but it really did happen. He was a frog, a real, live, fly-eating frog with webbed feet and the lot.'

Gobsmacked, Lily stared. And then, consideringly, 'Do you think you could show me how to do that to P-'

'No, you are not doing it to James. Even if I could teach you, I wouldn't.'

Lily caught something in the tone around "could" and sat forward slightly. 'So do you know why it happened?' Ze's eyes darted toward the pillow concealing Montague's Guide to English Hybrids, and Lily's gaze followed. 'You've found it?' the redhead asked eagerly, reaching forward. 'You sneaked out to the library last night and found the spell-'

'No! Not quite,' Ze said hurriedly, catching Lily's hands before they could get a hold on the book. 'It's a bit…more complicated than that. I did go to the library to find some information, er, relating to the topic, but it hasn't got nowt to do with spells.'

Confusion took up residence in Lily's face, and she shook her head. 'I'm assuming you took Sirius as your wilderness guide, but what else would you have been looking for –'

She practically swallowed the rest of her sentence as Dorcas and Serena burst through the doors, giggling madly. 'Did you see his face?' Serena crowed. 'He's perfectly primed – you've got to deliver it tonight!'

'But the scent – I haven't put it on yet!' Dorcas was babbling. 'Where are the gloves –'

Lily's eyes darted to Ze, who shook her head frantically, demanding that the conversation cease immediately. 'We'll finish this later,' the redhead said sternly, and stood to face their friends, giving Ze time to compose herself. 'Who's putting gloves on what?'

'It's time for the first letter to our Darling Rob,' Serena beamed.

'We've just seen him in the common room,' Dorcas explained as she dropped into a crouch and began fumbling under her bed. 'He was chatting up this fifth year - ideal moment to hit him with the first dose.'

How do we always manage to get back to poison terminology? Ze wondered, putting her own concerns aside in favour of watching Dorcas – there was no other term for it – suit up. 'Er…why're you putting that…thing on?'

'Protective clothing,' Dorcas informed her, adjusting her brilliant yellow cover-alls and pulling on an industrial latex glove with a decidedly dramatic snap. 'It's essential that none of the scent cling to me – can't have him tracing things with his nose!'

'Oh, he only ever does that with food,' Ze murmured, entranced as she watched Dorcas strap on a sinister-looking mask as Serena conjured up what appeared to be a glass box with a tiny hole just in the centre of one wall.

'We'll just drop it in here,' Serena was saying, removing the lid and placing a folded and sealed letter on the tiny stand inside the box, 'and apply a vacuum at the end to remove the excess particles.'

'This is amazing,' Lily breathed.

'This is mental,' was Ze's reply.

'Right,' Serena said, replacing the lid and stepping back. 'Fire at your ready, Agent Andrews!'

'Aye aye!' Dorcas approached the box, brandishing a tiny bottle of brilliant purple glass with an old-fashioned perfume pump dangling from the stopper. 'On my count! Three –' the bottle was positioned before the hole. 'Two –' the pump was grasped in one gloved hand. 'One!' Two puffs of the pump had a fine cloud of mist spraying through the box to drift delicately down over the parchment.

Lily and Ze exchanged a glance: in comparison to the preparation, the result looked underwhelmingly harmless. 'Um….'

'Oh, it's necessary,' Serena called over, having noticed their scepticism. 'That's pure Essence of Desire, that is. Helen of Troy used to put one diluted drop behind each knee before going off to seduce government officials. One day her maid forgot to add the water, and next thing you know this loony called Paris is showing everyone some golden apple and Helen's husband is beating down the gates to the city.'

'And you gave that to Dorcas?' Ze and Lily gaped.

'Oh no,' Serena smiled as Dorcas de-suited in a contained area, complete with emergency shower. 'She already had it – but she's offered to loan it to me…'

They were spared the need to comment on this frankly astounding statement by the arrival of Grace. There was a momentary hitch in all systems as she strutted her way into the dormitory, but everyone recovered quickly enough. She flashed a smile around the room as she meandered toward her bed, the expression dimming to one of outright contempt as she spotted Dorcas, half out of her cover-alls. 'Evening, Frankenstein,' she murmured.

'Evening, Monster,' Dorcas shot back, surprising them all. Serena gave a little air-punch and mouthed "yes!" behind Grace's back.

Lily and Ze were both sniggering behind their hands, and Grace's eyes were narrowed: she didn't seem to have caught the joke. But, instead of attempting to eviscerate Dorcas, she shrugged and slipped out of her shoes before turning to her mirror. Glances were exchanged rapidly: Ze couldn't help but think about Lily's warning that, knowing what Grace was like, they wouldn't be surprised when the attack came…

'You alright, Grace?' Lily asked politely, moving back to her own bed as Dorcas folded her contamination suit slowly, eyes never leaving Grace.

'Oh yeah,' Grace replied breezily, removing her ear-rings and reaching for her face cream. 'You?'

'Fine,' was the cautious answer.

Ze, deciding that perhaps this unusual cordiality wasn't signalling an imminent attack after all, relaxed slightly, dropping back onto her bed and reaching for her school bag. In the mirror, Grace's eyes moved to focus on her. 'Didn't see you at dinner tonight, Ze,' she said with a light, harmless smile.

Ze went still again, wondering if this was what rabbits felt like on a moment-to-moment basis. 'No,' she replied carefully. 'I wasn't…in the mood.'

'Catching up on your beauty sleep – I imagine you needed to, after last night,' Grace added, giving a tinkling little laugh and winking - winking - at Ze in the mirror. 'You missed some lovely entertainment. I guess you already knew about it though,' she added.

Everyone was now looking back and forth between Ze and Grace, Serena and Dorcas unconsciously having moved closer together, Lily looking reading to intervene at the first show of blood. 'I don't know –' and then Ze paused, remembering Lily's salutation about Peter and Zeke. Singing. To one another. In public. Like they'd lost a bet and were paying for it… 'I didn't think they were doing it tonight,' she scrambled to say, hoping she sounded halfway like she wasn't surprised, only sorry she'd missed it. 'They've been practising for ages – was it any good?'

'Horrible,' Grace said succinctly, eyes glittering in the mirror as she deftly removed her lipstick. 'Such a shame for them to waste their…talents.' I know you know, those eyes were saying. And now you know I know…

Ze let out a slightly strangled laugh. 'I guess they decided to do the bit with the dance then. I'll have to ask them to do it over for me sometime.' Before she really knew what she was doing she'd stood and was sliding her feet into her shoes. 'Speaking of dinner though, I should probably pop down to the kitchens before they close up.'

'I'll go with you- ' Lily stared to say, but Ze cut her off.

'Nooo – you've got rounds, haven't you? Probably you'll want to get your things together before. I could bring you back a snack if you like – fancy anything? Fruit? Chocolates?' Ze offered, trying to make up for seventeen years' lost time of female-female communication by emoting with her eyes no! do not come!

'Oh,' Lily said, her back to the others, her eyebrows drawing and releasing in what Ze could only assume was the body-language equivalent of an epic poem. 'Right…no…thanks,' she trailed off.

'I could do with some bananas,' Dorcas piped up from over her shoulder.

'Right, bananas, on it,' Ze said with a sickly smile. 'Back in two seconds,' she promised, and positively fled, leaving a very confused Lily and an obnoxiously smug Grace.

Next Time on Match. (duh duh duuuh)

The door to the boys' seventh hit the wall with such force that the crack of the wood connecting with stone exploded two water glasses and sent Peter Pettigrew diving under his four-poster.

Ze skidded into the room as the door slammed shut again, the boom echoing through the tower. Peter let out a petrified squeak from beneath the bed and Sirius scrabbled to get his towel wrapped round his waist. Ze ignored the bid for modesty and went straight for the heart of the matter. 'You have got a serious problem.'

'Yeah,' Remus scowled, rubbing his ear. 'We've just gone completely deaf.'

Ze shot him a glare before lancing her gaze over the other three. 'Grace knows about your bet.'

A/N

well now, a mild month and a half is...entirely pathetic, and i must beg your forgiveness. the good news is, the plot is now sorted (well, as sorted as it's going to be) and hopefully this chapter will be the last example of slow, boring, absolute crap writing that i will be presenting. i cannot promise lightening quick updates in the near future, but hopefully they will at least be more consistent. and, yes, most of the ridiculous little details will be of use at some later point.

that said, some of them won't, so go mad guessing which are which. now that we've got past the requisite soul-searching and teary arguments, hopefully things will pick up a bit - that is, at least, the plan. things have been v. slow over the last few chapters - lots of words, not much action - and that needs to change. any other improvements (aside, of course, from Ze and Sirius getting together...)? mmm? also, cheers to anyone who catches the title reference - E, thanks for the suggestion ;)

to all who have reviewed, thanks! and to all who are reading and preparing to review, i salute you!

xx


	31. Come On Hide Your Lovers

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 31: Come On Hide Your Lovers

Stupid stupid stupid, Ze hissed to herself as she darted her way through the common room. The kitchens my arse – like she's dumb enough to believe that. The image of Grace's smug smile simply refused to get out of Ze's head, prompting the issue of a violent growl, which sent a herd of second year girls fleeing across the room. Not that Ze noticed: she was too wrapped up in thinking about how pathetically easy it had been for Sirius's ex-girlfriend to get a reaction out of her. It hasn't got anything to do with Sirius and you know it, Ze's id informed her disgustedly. She's like a little kid, picking at you to see if she can make you cry – and you're not any better! Honestly - you put us through puberty for this?

'Shut up,' Ze hissed under her breath, stalking right through a conversation by the windows and nearly running a small boy down.

'Hey Ze –'

She brushed past Zeke without even noticing his words or the wide grin that accompanied them. Without pausing, she threaded her way through a group by the stairs and thundered up to the boys' dormitories, not caring that she looked more than slightly mad: if she was going to go dashing around like a Musketeer, she might as well make the most of it, dramatic entrance and all. Although feathered caps weren't really her style…

The door to the boys' seventh hit the wall with enough force to send two water glasses smashing against the floor and Peter diving under his four-poster. Ze skidded into the room just in time for the door to slam impressively shut behind her, the boom echoing through the tower. Peter let out a petrified squeak from beneath the bed and Sirius scrabbled to get his towel wrapped around his waist. Ze, ignoring this chivalrous bid for modesty, wasted no time. 'You have got a serious problem.'

'Yeah,' Remus scowled, rubbing his ear. 'We've just gone completely deaf.'

Ze shot him a glare before sweeping her gaze over the other three, taking stock of the general it's-weekly-bath-night atmosphere. 'Put down that loofha and pay attention – this is not a test. And get whoever else is involved up here.'

'Involved?' James repeated, wiggling his ears to dispel the ringing. ' "Involved" in what –'

'Grace knows about your bet.'

The resulting silence was broken only by the sound of James's hair potion dripping between the fingers of his cupped palm.

'Is everyone okay?' Zeke burst through the door, staring wildly around. 'Did James blow himself up again?'

The spell broken, James huffed out a breath and muttered, 'Honestly, explode once and you never live it down, do you?' But no one was paying him any attention.

'WHAT?' Sirius and Remus shouted together, their eyes bugging ridiculously in Ze's direction.

'Only I saw Ze running up here, looking ready to do a murder –' Zeke was saying, oblivious to the crisis above him as he knelt down to peer beneath the bed at Peter. 'Those socks aren't back, are they?'

'The way our luck's going?' James said morosely to the air, 'bring them on.'

Both Remus and Sirius were staring at Ze. 'You're sure?' Remus asked; Sirius didn't need to.

'Positive,' Ze affirmed.

'Right,' Sirius said. 'Zeke – go get Rob and Allister.'

Zeke, who was attempting to soothe Pete into rejoining the world of the Above-Bed, held one finger up to request another moment.

'Zeke. Rob, Allister, now,' Sirius snapped. 'We'll take care of Pete.' Zeke took one look at his face and, raising his eyebrows in faint surprise, ducked back out the door.

As his footsteps hurried downward toward the lower dormitories, Remus began to tug Peter out from under the bed by his ankles, cursing fluently, while James turned back to Ze. 'Grace knows? How?' he demanded as Peter came shooting out from under the bed like the proverbial greased piglet. 'You didn't tell her did you?'

Peter's eyes flew wide, darting from James to Ze and back as he scrambled off the floor. 'Wait a second,' Remus snapped, whirling around to glower at Ze. 'How do you know?'

'Sirius must have told!' Peter gasped, now staring back and forth between Sirius and Ze. 'Which means he'll be out of –'

'Do you honestly think Sirius would sell you lot out?' Ze snorted. 'Not likely.'

Peter's face went positively white. 'Then Grace told –'

'Grace told what?' Rob asked from the doorway, his eyes lit at the prospect of mayhem, Zeke and Allister crowding into the room behind him.

'The bet,' James snapped.

'Our bet,' Remus elaborated. 'The one no one is supposed to know about.'

'Hang on – how does Grace know –'

'Who'd she tell!'

'Who'd she tell – ha! Who the hell'd she hear it from?'

'SILENCE!' James roared. The outburst was so unusual all seven mouths shut at once with a collective snap. James, his hands shaking slightly, turned an alarmingly focussed gaze onto Ze. 'Would you be so kind,' he said softly, 'as to explain?'

All eyes swivelled to Ze, who pinched the bridge of her nose and addressed Sirius with a sigh. 'You're going to want your trousers on for this.'

Remus closed his eyes and murmured a phrase that had even Rob's ears going pink. 'Right,' Sirius said shortly, and he shuffled behind his bed curtains to do a quick change.

'Your basic problem is that Grace definitely knows what's up,' Ze began, her voice loud enough to carry through the curtains. 'I don't think she knew before the weekend,' she added as Sirius re-emerged in the Marauder battle armour of grey t-shirt and jeans, 'but she definitely does now –'

'How,' Zeke interrupted. 'I mean, no offence, but that's just not possible –'

'Not possible?' Ze repeated flatly, unable to believe anyone could be so thick. But, glancing around with a keener eye, she saw that, while the Marauders and especially Peter were appropriately ashen, Zeke, Rob and Allister were looking more than slightly sceptical. 'Did you honestly think you could keep this a secret?' she asked incredulously. 'Do you think everyone's so blind they wouldn't notice that you're stumbling around like zombies, drooling madly over everything with tits? Or playing cards to keep from combusting, and reeling between classes and just generally acting even weirder than usual? And that no one would wonder why?'

'Yeah, but they'd have to read the terms to figure that out, wouldn't they?' Rob began –

'Read - read the terms?' Ze exploded. 'You idiots put this down in writing? Honestly, and you wonder why you're fucked! Writing it down-'

'Have you read it then?' Remus interrupted coolly. 'You should have done by now, considering it's hanging on the wall in this very room.'

'Bollocks,' she snapped, her gaze sweeping beadily around. 'The only thing on the walls is that manky old clipping-' Ze turned to point to the yellowed scrap of newsprint tacked up by the door, and paused as the headline finally registered. She whipped back around to stare at the words – 'The Hardest Part of Abstinence: It's All in the Pants' – that were winking cheekily back at her.

'Give us a bit of credit,' Sirius said, managing a faint smile despite the fact he looked one melodramatic revelation away from being properly sick.

'Honestly - we're not complete amateurs,' James agreed.

'But you still have one-track minds,' Ze muttered. 'Right,' she added in a clearer voice. 'So at least you know Grace had to do a bit more work than climbing the stairs and looking at the artwork – but still, this is hardly your cleverest moment, is it?'

'Did you come up here to tell us off, or tell us what's going on?' Zeke asked impatiently.

Ze rubbed a hand over hear face. 'Look, that was out of order and I'm sorry. I can't pretend I think any of this is a good idea, but that really isn't the point, is it? The point is Grace heard you two,' she nodded at Pete and Zeke, 'singing at dinner, and had a few things to say about it – namely that you were all wasting your "talents". And she didn't mean anything about a singing career - '

'Wait, so she hasn't actually said -' Remus began at the same moment Rob said, 'And you took that to mean she knows -'

Ze's eyes narrowed. 'Look, it was the way she said it, okay? She –'

'She doesn't know nothing – she's just having you on!'

'How could she possibly have found out, anyway? No one knows but us, and –' James stopped mid-sentence, as Ze arched one slender black brow in contest. 'Oh,' he whispered. 'Oh shit.'

'What?' Rob asked, staring back and forth between them. 'What d'you mean "oh shit" – no one knows but us!'

'And me,' Ze said drily. 'And how do you think I found out?'

'Clive,' Remus murmured, realisation dawning. 'You stupid bastard…'

'He isn't stupid,' Ze began, but Sirius interrupted her.

'You don't think Clive told Grace,' he said. 'I mean, why?'

Ze's lips curved in a rueful smile and she arched her brows faintly.

'But - he's shagging Claudia, isn't he!' James cried. 'And she isn't the sort to share –'

'No, but he's the sort who has trouble watching his mouth,' Remus pointed out, beginning to pace. 'And it doesn't take much to get him talking.'

'I barely had to try to get it out of him,' Ze admitted. 'Grace could probably do it with a look.'

'But he's never alone,' Peter said desperately. 'Claudia's always with him.'

'Well they're friends, aren't they?' Everyone turned to stare at Allister, who was looking uncomfortable at having broken his usual silence. 'Grace and that Claudia girl,' he clarified, hunching his shoulders. 'They always walk together after Runes.' There was a moment of horrified silence as this bit of news sunk in.

'And they were out last night,' Zeke murmured, looking guiltily from Ze to Sirius. 'Clive and Claudia at least had been out of bounds and ended up in this broom cupboard – and they were definitely happy about something.'

'You mean – nooooo,' James gaped. 'Clive - our Clive? – with Claudia and Grace? He wouldn't! She wouldn't!' He turned to Sirius desperately. 'Would she?'

Sirius's cheek flushed to match his bed-curtains. 'I-I-I-' he stuttered, his gaze rocketing around the room. 'I, um, well - she never seemed dissatisfied with just the – just me,' he finally blurted out. 'I mean, I think she always, well, you know –'

'No,' Rob said hopefully. 'We don't.'

'The three of them together isn't really what I meant,' Zeke hastily broke in, 'but I guess it might be an option –'

'An option?!' Rob shouted. 'It's the best bloody idea since nude beaches!'

'Which are nothing but sagging breasts and rampant back hair,' Remus interjected scathingly. 'Could we, for once, stay on topic?'

'I really don't think Grace would shag Clive,' Peter said timidly. 'I just don't see it.'

'And Clive really likes Claudia,' Allister agreed, 'so probably he wouldn't shag Grace.'

Rob's jaw dropped. 'What? 'Course he would! Grace is top totty! Er, no offence,' he added to Sirius, who was still looking faintly dazed by it all.

'Unlike you, Rob, the individuals concerned keep their trousers loose enough for blood to flow to their brains,' Remus said with his usual acidic sense. 'I doubt either Clive or Grace would go through with it – there are just too many risks.'

Ze, who had been watching in silence, decided to take advantage of the situation. She knew Sirius wasn't keen on discussing Grace, and thought the more private the conversation, the better, particularly as Rob and Remus were too busy arguing about orgiastic sex to pay attention. Slipping onto the bed beside him, she folded her knees up and looked out onto the verbal duelling, directing her eyes to the action and her words to Sirius. 'Grace didn't get back to our room last night until after I'd left to get you.'

Gray eyes darkened instantly to soot. 'What? How do you know - how much after?'

'Lily – and she wasn't sure. She thought ten, maybe fifteen minutes, so there's a chance Grace was in the common room when you and I were.' Now she did turn to face him, wondering if he would find it worrying for the same reasons she did. 'I'm not saying she had been out with Clive or Claudia, or the both of them, and we might have missed her, but -'

'So sorry to interrupt your tête-à-tête, but what the hell are you talking about?' Remus snapped. They jumped, not having realised that silence had fallen around them.

'Grace,' Sirius and Ze chorused, sharing a glance. When Sirius shrugged his permission for her to continue, Ze did so. 'There's a possibility she saw Sirius and me leaving the common room together last night. She was out of bed until at least midnight –'

'No, it was later than that,' Zeke interrupted. 'She was in the common room when I, er, got back. And that must've been half five, if not later,' he said, his dark gaze full of gathering worry. 'She was just sitting on the sofa, but I thought it was weird. She was wearing one of those – what do you call them –' he waved his hands around his chest and shoulders.

'Negligees,' Sirius and Remus sighed together.

'Is that what she usually wears to bed?' Rob asked Ze, who curled her lip.

'How should I know?'

'You live with her.'

'Yeah? What's Zeke wear to bed?'

'Uhhhhh…'

'See?'

'Zazzer –'

'I know, I know – maybe…a nightdress?' Ze hazarded, trying to bring up an image of Grace By Night and gathering a general feeling of shiny stuff with lace on. 'Long though, and not see-through. Negligees are see-through, aren't they?'

Sirius and Remus shrugged. In their experience, negligees were bloody brilliant, the see-through factor not withstanding. 'Enough about the underwear,' James said impatiently. 'Aside from the scintillating but slim possibility of a ménage-a-troi, all we've got so far is circumstantial evidence suggesting Grace might know. We haven't got any actual proof-'

'James –'

'No, he's right,' Zeke was saying. 'I'm not trying to be rude Zaz, but I think you might be overreacting – just a bit.'

Ze stared around at their faces – apologetically, kindly, but most definitely disbelieving, down to a one – and felt completely ridiculous. Because what if she was overreacting? Reading too much into those snide glances and that smug smile? You're not, and you know it, the back of her head informed her, and just hearing that cool little voice agree had the nasty feeling in her stomach solidifying. 'She knows,' Ze blurted out. 'I don't care if you believe me,' she added, shaking her head, 'but she knows.'

'But she hasn't said -'

'Girls don't say things!' she exploded, taking Remus completely by surprise and shutting him right up. 'Alright, we do, we talk all the time, but not about things like this. She'll never come out and say it – not completely, okay? But she knows – she was sitting there, the cow, all smug and satisfied and taking off her makeup, and it was just her tone and the way she was looking and – and – Well, you won't understand because you're not girls, but you've got to trust me, okay? Just think of it as – as – as feminine intuition.'

This instigated a mass recoil: intuition, no matter the gender, was sticky territory indeed. And then Sirius said, 'Okay.' All the others turned horrified gazes on him, and he shrugged before nodding at Ze. 'I'll trust you.'

'Sirius, you can't be –' Rob broke off, realising what he was about to say.

'Serious?' Sirius sighed. 'A plague on you, Mother,' he added, shaking one fist lethargically at the sky. 'But yes, I can. If anyone's capable of inciting a riot with a smug look and some makeup, it's Grace – and if she does know, well...'

'Well?' Rob prompted after a moment's pause. 'Because honestly, I don't really see what's so bad about all this. If Grace does know,' he continued with a nod to Ze, 'then what's she going to do? Tell everyone? "Come one, come all – the Gryffindor quidditch side have sworn off sex!"' he shouted in a parody of a town crier, ending with a snort of laughter. 'Really, we're just looking at total social ruin – who cares?'

A glance around the circle of faces saw contemplation stealing into gazes. 'You know, for once, you have got a point,' Zeke said slowly.

'Yeah!' James echoed, his eyes lighting with excitement. 'We've been socially ruined loads of times before – we've still got the crash helmets, we can survive! And it might not even be ruin this time – I mean, if all those girls hear that we're abstaining, they won't be able to resist! Lily's never been able to turn down a challenge!'

'Yes, but she's always been able to turn down you, so let's not be too hasty, mm?' Remus suggested, obviously hating to dampen the ebullience, but unable to allow James to stray too far from reality.

'He's right though,' Rob was grinning. 'All those birds, just gagging for it –'

'Only if you mean gagging in the literal sense,' Ze muttered darkly.

'Maybe we should tell –'

'No - that'd get us kicked out of the bet, wouldn't it?' Remus said pointedly, killing off this latest of Rob's hopes.

'But we could get Clive to do it –'

'No one is saying anything,' Remus said firmly. 'Not now, not ever.'

'Except Grace,' Sirius murmured.

'But we've just decided that isn't a bad thing,' Allister reminded him.

Sirius smiled faintly, but there was no hint of amusement. 'Not a bad thing? You don't think it'll be bad when Ellie finds out you got interested in her about a week after you took a vow of celibacy?'

Allister shrugged, echoing the sentiments of all the others. 'She knows I like her – she'll understand. What?' he asked, when Ze snorted derisively. 'What's funny?'

'You – thinking you'll still have a girlfriend if Grace decides to start spreading rumours,' was the reply.

'Ellie is not going to believe some rumour –' Allister began.

'No, Ellie is going to believe you're an absolutely bastard, because Ellie is going to believe her friends, who are going to believe whatever Grace says,' Ze predicted sardonically. 'Because Ellie, pet, is a girl.'

'What's that supposed to mean?' Zeke asked indignantly.

'Yeah,' Rob agreed, 'we know you're not really any cleverer than us.'

Sirius, who could smell a row, sighed and took the stand. 'It means Ellie's going to know that, after a month of not touching anything, including himself, Alli would find just about anything utterly shaggable.'

'But it wasn't a month,' Allister cried indignantly.

'It will be in Grace's version – trust me. And she'll make sure it's just as bad, if not worse, in everyone else's. By the time Grace is finished, Ellie'll assume that your interest in her isn't personal at all,' Sirius said, his eyes flicking over to lock with Ze's. 'If you're lucky she'll give you a chance to grovel and apologise, but she'll still feel used and worthless and faceless. It'll be rubbish,' he added, his gaze darting away again. 'But she'll still think it.'

'I didn't think it,' Ze pointed out wryly, 'you said it. And if Allister explains the whole thing to Ellie logically and honestly – and as soon as bloody possible - she might not think he sees her as the equivalent of a meat pie. And he might not have to – what was it? Grovel and beg?'

'Grovel and apologise,' Sirius replied, turning more fully to face her.

'Okay, getting awkward for the rest of us,' James said with nervous cheer. 'How about we return to the topic of Getting Out of This With Our Balls Attached?'

'I haven't got balls,' Ze said waspishly.

'Thank Merlin for small favours,' Sirius muttered.

Ze burst out laughing and turned, the words on the tip of her tongue –

But Peter piped up before she could speak. 'How're we going to find out what Grace knows?'

'I say we ask her,' Rob said firmly.

'I say you're dumber than you look,' Zeke shot back. 'And that's not easy.'

'Oooh - someone's been reading "How to Make Five Year Olds Cry".'

'And it's standing in the corner for the both of you,' Remus said in brilliant imitation of McGonagall. 'Well go on. No? You can behave?' Zeke and Rob nodded petulantly. 'Right then, those of you with attention spans, continue.'

James shook himself. 'So.'

'So asking her won't get you anywhere,' Sirius said, settling more comfortably onto his bed and feeling Ze's weight shift toward him. 'Talking with Grace is like playing topsy-turvey during an earthquake, and she's probably genetically immune to Veritaserum.'

'We need to talk to Clive then,' was Allister's contribution.

'We need to talk to Clive? Clive needs to talk to us!'

Ze and Sirius exchanged another look, their knees brushing. 'So it isn't just us then – he's ignoring everyone?' Ze asked the room at large.

There was a general look-around-and-shrug. 'Pretended not to see me at breakfast –'

'Never in the common room anymore –'

'Haven't seen him since last week –'

James, very well aware of the fact that Sirius and Ze were practically sitting in one another's laps now, eyed the nervous way Zaz was chewing her lip, and the protective way Sirius was watching her do it. Elbowing Remus, he cocked his head in their direction, and let his friend take the scene in. Arching his brows at James, Remus nodded. 'Drawn together in dark times,' he murmured. 'Very nice – very My Dearest Rogue. Right!' he said, addressing the room at large. 'So we're dealing with Clive.'

'D'you think if we all got together?' Allister suggested.

'We could kidnap him!'

'Yeah! Tie him up!'

'With the Chains!'

'To the Chair!'

'In the Robes!'

'Shut up about the Robes, will you?' Zeke hissed, elbowing Rob sharply and nodding toward Ze.

She rolled her eyes. 'I have never seen the robes – I had no idea there were robes – I definitely don't know that you keep them in the false bottom of James's wardrobe…'

'Is nothing secret anymore?' James bemoaned. 'Is nothing sacred?'

'Sacred? We had to remake the Seventeenth Seal out of half a potato!'

'Oh, details.'

'FOCUS!'

Once the walls had stopped shaking, everyone turned very politely to face Remus, and watched his mouth move as they rubbed the hearing back into their ears. 'We have got a lot to do, and I for one would like to get some sleep tonight,' he was rapping out in his best drill sergeant manner. 'We need to organise an Inquisition, hunt up Clive, and begin the Procedure. Potter, are those manacles back from cleaning yet?'

'Errrr….'

'That guilty, shifty-eyed look says it all!' Remus barked. 'Find some new ones and make it quick! Black! We need to know everything you can tell us about Grace –'

'With emphasis on the physical appearance department,' Rob added hastily.

'-except how she looks with her clothes off!' Remus spat.

'So is Grace an Enemy or not?' Peter asked hesitantly.

'Currently without classification!'

Ze shifted toward Allister and whispered, 'What's an Enemy?'

He shot a furtive glance at Remus, and replied out of the corner of his mouth. 'S'like an enemy, but with a capital 'e' –'

'Pipe down over there and Plot!'

Ze raised her hand, but was ignored as orders continued to be shouted. James had disappeared into his wardrobe, and an alarmingly diverse array of objects were being tossed out over his shoulder. Immediately after a close brush with decapitation-by-Morningstar, Ze gave up on waving and shouted, 'OI! Point of Order!'

Movement ceased, and everyone's eyes swivelled to her as all brains tried to dredge up what the etiquette for Point of Order was. Ze, who had guessed quite correctly that there wasn't any, ploughed on. 'Look, I don't know what an Inquisition is, but James doesn't seem to have the manacles and it really is getting late. Why not just talk to him?'

The pause was epic. And then, finally, 'Talk.'

'You mean – just, well, just sit down and talk?'

Peter cleared his throat. 'Uh – Point of Order?' he tried.

Remus groaned and shot Ze a glare. 'Now we'll have to update the Protocol as well.'

'So what exactly would we be asking?' Pete was saying.

James shrugged. 'Something along the lines of "Did you tell your snotty cow of a girlfriend anything about that bet?"'

'Only maybe not the snotty cow part,' Zeke, soul of diplomacy, suggested.

'Sounds fair to me,' Allister shrugged, and Rob nodded his agreement.

'So,' Sirius said into the silence. 'Who's going to do it?'

It was the sort of silence that has crickets chirping and tumbleweeds blowing across plains. Finally, with a heavy sigh, Ze raised a hand. 'I'll do it.'

There was a great deal of nervous shifting. 'Are you sure?' James asked.

'He's my best mate, isn't he?' Ze shrugged resignedly. 'And I don't see anyone else volunteering.'

'Still, if you'd rather not - '

'No, it's fine, I don't mind. Really.' Sirius thought she might have been a bit more believable if her entire body hadn't been radiating tension. His arm started to sneak around her shoulder and stopped abruptly when he felt her shift so that she was sitting a bit straighter. There was a brief narrowing of eyes, almost like she was making her mind up about something. And then: 'But there's a condition.'

'I knew it,' Rob muttered.

'If I talk to Clive, Allister and Zeke have to talk to Ellie and Riya,' she said flatly. 'You have got to tell them. Because if Grace decides to say something, it won't be public and she won't tell the truth – and you can be sure they'll hear about it from someone besides you.'

Zeke and Allister shifted nervously. 'I dunno –'

'I mean, it probably won't come out at all –'

'I never thought I'd say this,' Sirius interrupted, 'but honesty isn't always a bad thing. If you tell them now, you might have a shot at explaining it without getting your head – or anything else – ripped off.'

Allister was now looking decidedly off colour and Zeke had the sudden urge to cross his legs. 'Right, yeah, I can see how that might be a good idea…'

'So we have a deal?' Ze asked. 'I talk to Clive and you talk to your girlfriends?'

'And no one talks to Grace?' James asked.

'Let her stew,' Sirius shrugged. 'It'll be good for her – she likes instant gratification and making other people squirm. The best thing we could do is go around like nothing's wrong.'

Everyone glanced toward Remus for approval, and he nodded slowly. 'Alright – we have a Plan.'

'Brilliant,' Peter sighed, relieved.

'But you still owe us new manacles,' Remus said to James with a sternly pointed finger.

'We have a plan,' Ze repeated, attempting to convince herself.

'It'll be okay,' Sirius smiled, reaching for her hand and aborting at the last moment when he realised what he was doing.

Ze's smile hitched slightly, but she nodded and stood. 'Right, I'm going to bed then.' She got as far as the door before she remembered that she was supposed to have been off getting food. 'Oh – shit,' she hissed, turning back. 'Look, really random question, but does anyone know where I can get some bananas?'

All seven boys froze.

'Bananas?' James squeaked.

Sirius swallowed. 'Kitchens are closed by now,' he managed to say. 'Sorry.'

Ze shook her head and pasted on a smile. 'She can survive for one night. Sweet dreams then,' she added over her shoulder, and darted out of the room, the door swinging shut behind her. There was a long moment filled with very shallow breathing.

And then Rob said, 'They must really be serious about practising.'

*.*.*.*

The lights were completely out when Ze slipped back into the girls', and Ze tried to heave a very quiet sigh of relief. Aside from returning empty-handed in the fruit department, she just wasn't in the mood for conversation. Despite the fact that she'd claimed to be on her way to bed, she wasn't in the least tired – and even if she had been, she wasn't sure she could sleep. Grace was only the mildest of the problems – and if she got tired of that, she could always worry about what she was going to say to Clive. But what was really worrying her was how she'd been feeling since last night. Or, more precisely, how she'd been feeling since she'd read that chapter in English Hybrids just before Lily had burst in on her. Because that had started her thinking, which was always dangerous, and things had just gotten much stickier, ever since she'd opened her mouth and nearly said –

Well, she didn't quite know. Except that she did know - which was why she felt as though she had a hedgehog tap-dancing in her gut. And having Grace to worry about allowed her to shove it to the back corner of her mind, which was really where it ought to belong, because she just didn't have time right now, she really didn't –

But maybe she was reading too much into things. That tended to happen, she had discovered, when you had a lot to think about. Perhaps she was just, oh, making it all up. That was entirely possible, really, and would make life so much simpler. Simpler, and probably a lot more boring. Not that boring was a bad thing: life had been "boring" for most of the years she'd been at school, and she'd gotten along just fine. Except that this year had been so much more fun… Alright, that was enough of that. She was not going to lie around mumbling and whimpering to herself: it was time to get this sorted. Which was why she crawled straight onto her bed and closed her curtains, lighting her wand when she was sure there were no gaps. And, pulling the Montague book from beneath her pillow, she opened to the first page, and began to read…

Several hours later she lay back on her pillow and stared up at her canopy. It started slowly at first – just a little snort here and a giggle there – but soon she was shaking with it, her entire body seizing up. Hands clapped over her mouth, toes curled and stomach clenching, she laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed until she was hiccoughing madly and tears were streaming over her cheeks.

Because it wasn't funny. It really wasn't funny at all.

*.*.*.*.*

The slamming of the door woke Sirius, and he jolted upright just in time to get a blast of sunlight straight in the eye. Muttering curses at inconsiderate roommates, inefficient bed-curtains, and living stars, he tumbled off the side of the bed and, crouching on his knees, tried to rub some of the spots out of his burning retinas.

'Morning,' a raspy voice growled from his left, followed by the shifting of bedclothes.

'Morning Remus,' he mumbled, his own voice thick and rough. After another moment of ocular recovery, he stood, yawning and stretching, to glance around. What he saw surprised him: out of the five beds, three were empty. And, unless someone was being frighteningly quiet about it, no one was brushing his teeth or having a shower. 'Who's just left?'

Remus, whose eyes were shadowed and exhausted, yawned, his fingers absently scratching a long, thick scar on his shoulder. 'Clive,' he replied, shaking his head. 'Got in at Merlin knows what time. He's really only ever here to shower and change his clothes.'

'I'm counting on Ze to talk some sense in to him,' Sirius admitted as he shuffled around, looking for the various bits of his school uniform.

'Thump some sense in to him, more like,' Remus grunted.

This had Sirius's lips twitching: not that he hoped Ze and Clive got into a fight, but it would be amusing…particularly as Clive didn't have a prayer of winning. 'So where's everyone else?' he asked, forcing himself back to reality. 'S'bit early for everyone to be gone, isn't it?'

'James had some head boy thing – him and Lily and McGonagall.' Sirius grimaced: that sounded so fun. 'And Pete had a meeting with Flitwick about his essay,' Remus added with a shrug. 'Don't think he's started it yet.'

Sirius nodded, collapsing back onto his bed to stare at the canopy of his bed, his uniform heaped on his lap. Surprisingly enough, he'd slept well the night before – once he'd got to sleep, of course. Prior to that he'd worried about Ze, Clive, and Grace, more or less in that order. Ze was, of course, his primary concern: he intended to be three steps behind her the entire day, just in case she needed him. Because he had a feeling about today – one of those stomach-swimming, finger-tingling feelings. Or maybe it was just that he hadn't eaten in more than three hours.

'It's going on half eight, you know,' Remus said absently as he buttoned his shirt. 'We're missing breakfast.'

This got Sirius's attention – but what held it was the way Remus's fingers were shaking slightly as he cinched the knot on his tie. 'Shit,' Sirius groaned, sitting up and counting rapidly in his head. 'Moony – I'm sorry mate – I had completely forgotten!'

Remus chuckled wanly. 'S'not until tomorrow – I'm fine.'

But Sirius knew that "fine" hardly the appropriate term. And, if he'd been paying a little less attention to himself, and a little more to the people that mattered, he would have been doing a better job of taking care of his friend. Anyone else would have assumed that Remus's haggard expression and shadowed eyes meant he was coming down with a nasty case of flu, which was generally the excuse he used. But Sirius knew that, just as the days after a full moon were spent convalescing, the days before were spent denying increasingly animalistic impulses. The glassy gaze, cold sweats, and exhausted demeanour weren't signs of a common cold – they were the physical manifestations of the battle being raged between raw steak and medium rare.

'Yeah, well, I'm still an insensitive git. You go on,' Sirius said gently, handing Remus his satchel and wand. 'You've got time to get something to eat if you don't wait for me – go on, I'll catch you up.'

Remus smiled wryly and accepted his bag. 'If you tell me I've got to keep my strength up, I'll bite you.'

'Wouldn't do anything to me 'til tomorrow night,' Sirius replied cheekily, and cocked his head the door. 'So go on – bit of dry toast and some gruel if they have it.'

'Fuck you,' Remus yawned.

'I'm not that desperate yet – but give me a few weeks!' Sirius shouted after him.

From the staircase he heard Remus mutter, 'no wonder everyone thinks we're poofs.'

*.*.*.*.*

Divination was a tense period for Ze: she was sitting between Sirius and James, her stomach squirming. Immediately after would be her best chance to corner Clive, and she still had no idea what she was going to say. Top contenders so far were: "you stupid ass", followed by "I might feel sorry for you if you hadn't brought it on yourself", with "so, did you gift-wrap your balls before you gave them to Claudia?" bringing up the rear. Unfortunately, she needed to avoid antagonising him – which was a real pity, because she couldn't seem to think of anything neutral to say. But they both had a free hour before their next class – ostensibly for revision, not that anyone but Dorcas ever bothered – and it was the only time Ze could think of when he wouldn't be glued to Claudia's side.

At least, that had been the plan this morning - now, after an hour of listening to Professor Aurora explain how one might, in theory, read the future in bird entrails, she was fairly certain she'd lost her bottle. Aurora was ebullient over the newly invented "avian-friendly" method of internal organ perusal (something involving fowl health statistics, probability equations, and pigeon compliance) that ensured no bird ever again need perish in the quest for human knowledge, but Ze couldn't seem to get interested. On the table in front of her was a simulacra of a chicken's stomach, complete with viscous membrane, which she was supposed to be using to divine her own future. Somehow, she doubted she needed any part of a chicken to figure out that things were pretty much crap.

Unaware of this internal turmoil, Sirius, his eyes glued to the train-wreck of teaching at the front of the class, leaned in until their shoulders brushed. 'She's waving around that stuffed chicken, and I just keep thinking about her and Biggerton-Wallop,' he whispered out of the side of his mouth. Ze's face, already pallid, lost another shade of colour. 'Honestly, in the Defence classroom, on someone's desk-'

'Sirius,' Ze hissed, 'this stomach is going up your nose if you say another word.'

One glance was enough to take in the pale cheeks and clenched fists – not to mention the sticky red blob - and he desisted immediately. 'Right – stress - Clive.'

'Right,' Ze agreed, determinedly not looking at the boy in question.

'Now,' Professor Aurora intoned, 'if you will turn to your respective organs…'

Forcing herself to concentrate, Ze prayed that her chicken hadn't been prone to indigestion.

*.*.*.*.*

'Clive. Clive,' Ze was calling a half hour later as she threaded her way through the rapidly dispersing Divination class. Leaving Sirius to gather up their homework, she slid down the ladder and hurried after his retreating back, ignoring the way her classmates were arching brows speculatively as she passed. By the end of the corridor she was directly behind him, and knew that if he didn't turn around this time, he was most definitely pretending not to hear. 'Clive, can I have a –'

'Hi Ze,' he interrupted, not turning to acknowledge her. If anything, his pace quickened, until he was not-quite-running away.

'Hiya Clive,' she replied uncomfortably, after a moment's pause. 'Look, could we slow down for just a second – I need to ask you someth-

Now he was just plain running. 'I really need to get to the, erm, to the library,' he informed her, still not looking up, as he swerved into a shortcut that would take them toward the stairs.

'It'll only take a second,' she wheedled, and her teeth went on edge at the tone of her own voice: was she honestly having to beg to talk to the boy who had been her best friend for most of their time at school? Well bugger this for a lark, she thought, and reached out to grab his arm, jerking him to a halt. 'Will you stop running away?' she snapped. 'If you don't want to talk to me, at least be honest about it.'

At this his eyes did swing up to meet hers, and she was irritated to see that he looked more pained than guilty. 'I just - I'm not supposed to be talking to you alone –' he began, glancing around as though expecting Claudia to materialise out of the walls.

'Clive,' Ze broke in in what she hoped was a calm and sensible voice, just wanting to get through this without resorting to a blazing row – and feeling horribly afraid that she wasn't going to make it. 'I'm going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer me honestly –'

'Look, I know you don't like my dating Claudia –'

And that was absolutely the one thing he should not have said. 'We have got bigger problems than you being led around by your penis!' Ze shouted, her control snapping. 'No, I don't like the fact that one of my best friends is being manipulated by a selfish cow, but frankly it isn't any of my business and right now I could care fuck all about who you're shagging! Now, I am going to ask you a question that has nothing whatsoever to do with your love life, and I'm hoping you'll have the sense to answer.'

Clive, his eyes showing white all the way around – in six years and some-odd months of knowing Ze, she'd only ever lost her temper the once - nodded rapidly. 'Right.'

'Have you told Claudia anything about the bet the rest of the quidditch side have made?' she asked, her eyes boring into his. 'Anything?'

'What?' he squawked. 'No, of course not – I'm not completely stupid.' The last was said with a bit of a snap, and, because Ze had been watching and because she'd known him for a very long time, she caught the faint hint of worry in his gaze.

'Not anything, not even some stupid joke you thought she wouldn't get?' she pressed, watching his eyes for a flair of guilt. And her own lids slid shut as she saw exactly what she'd been afraid of seeing.

'Well, maybe – but – well not really,' he was saying. 'I mean, I might have made a comment or two in passing, but nothing she could have –'

'She isn't deaf, Clive,' Ze said, frustration sharpening her voice to a keen edge. 'And she certainly isn't stupid. Look,' she continued when a grimace of remorse flashed across his face, 'I know you didn't do it intentionally, alright? But is there any chance, even the slightest possibility, that she could have figured out what's going on?'

'No,' he said immediately. 'Well – like you said, she isn't deaf so there's a chance, I guess, but a really small one, okay? I swear I never said anything to give it away.'

'I know,' Ze sighed, resisting the urge to rub away the headache gathering between her eyes. Because she did know that Clive would never have meant to give it away - but that didn't mean he hadn't.

'What's all this about, anyway?' he asked, voice tinged with curiosity, obviously assuming that as she wasn't shouting anymore it would be okay for him to ask.

Ze, already lost in the possibilities, shook her head impatiently. 'Don't worry about it.'

'So I'm not supposed to think something's gone terribly wrong on the Thou Shalt Not Shag front?' he half-laughed, a hint of his usual geniality creeping back through.

But it died moments later as the look Ze turned on him went right past disbelief to scorn. 'Is that how you think this works?' she asked incredulously. 'That all you have to do is smile and joke and it's back to old times?'

'What's that supposed to mean?' he demanded, visibly stung.

'It means that if you'd pull your head out of Claudia's bum long enough to look around, you'd see that you haven't half been a git lately!' Incensed by the fact that he looked more confused than reprimanded, she moved a step closer. 'Honestly Clive, we're not deaf either – or blind, or stupid. You've got yourself a girlfriend, and all of a sudden we're unfit company. You don't even act like yourself anymore – and you're never in Gryffindor tower, we barely see you for quidditch and never for meals, so pardon us if we're a bit confused about whether you still think of us as friends.'

'So what, I'm supposed to ignore all that crap about Claudia being manipulative and selfish, but you're allowed to take offence at my not eating dinner with you every night?' he asked hotly.

'You'd take offence about Claudia if you actually thought what I said wasn't true,' Ze snapped right back.

'You mean you think I agree that I'm being led around by my – by my –'

'Your knob? Yeah, I do. And if you don't know, maybe you ought to have a think, because you'd be the only one who hasn't figured it out yet!'

'That's bollocks!' he shouted back. 'You're just jealous because I like her better than you!'

'And you're making a fool out of yourself just for a chance to see some bird's tits!'

Sirius popped his head around the corner. 'Sorry to interrupt, but you might want to belt up about Claudia and her ti-

'What is going on here?'

Sirius grimaced violently and everyone jumped at the sound of those strident tones – Clive higher than anyone else. 'Uhh–'

'You alight Claudia?' Sirius asked, turning on his heel and smiling manically at her.

But Claudia ignored this bid for civility completely, her eyes skimming from Clive to Ze, and narrowing substantially along the way. 'You were supposed to meet me in the library as soon as you got out of class,' she said to Clive, and it had the feel of a rebuke rather than a reminder.

'Yeah, sorry,' he replied, his words shorter than he meant them to be as he was still busy glaring at Ze. He realised his mistake with one razor-sharp clearing of Claudia's throat. 'I, er, I'm really sorry? I got…caught up,' he mumbled, his grimace obscenely contrite.

'Yes, talking to her,' Claudia sneered, waving a hand impatiently in Ze's direction.

'She has a name,' Sirius began, but Ze had had enough.

'Yes, talking to her, Claudia,' she said coolly, stepping forward so that she was barely an arm's-length from the shorter girl, staring her dead in the eye for a long moment. And then, quite deliberately, she turned to address Clive. 'To his friend, Ze Meridian, who, in spite of whatever poison has been dripped in his ear, hopes that there's enough of Clive left in there for him to know that if she'd ever fancied him, she would have told him by now. And she hopes he knows that she misses him – that she doesn't want him as a boyfriend, that she's never wanted him like that, and that she would be thrilled if he had a girlfriend worthy of him. One who didn't lie to him, or spread rumours about his friends, or feel the need to control his every move. She hopes he knows that she isn't giving up on him just because he's been a bit of a tosser, and that all she's ever wanted was for him to be happy. But she isn't going to lie to him, or let him pretend she doesn't exist just to make his life a bit easier. Because she's known him too long, and she cares about him too much to let him make an arse of himself like that any longer.'

Unable to hold Clive's gaze, which was growing uncomfortably intense, Ze shifted her attention to Claudia and discovered that she wasn't angry – not at all. She just felt...she felt... 'And she feels sorry for you, Claudia, because you're so insecure in yourself that you can't let go of him, even for a minute. She wishes you understood that being clever and pretty and interested in him is more than enough to keep him interested in you. Because he does like you – just you – and he's fancied you for all the right reasons. And if you can't see that – if you don't want to see that - then you're worse off than I thought.'

Sirius shifted slightly in the ensuing silence, which Claudia finally managed to break with a pettish, 'Are you finished then?'

Ze, despite the way her fingers were beginning to shake, held Claudia's furious gaze and said, simply, 'No. You're never finished with your friends – you just give them their space and trust them to tell you when you're needed. Clive knows where he can find me.'

Well aware of how rare a thing it was to make a sweeping exit, Ze played the moment to the hilt, leaving a fuming Claudia and a contemplative Clive standing silently in the corridor. As she strode around the corner, her stomach a mass of butterflies and her face as blank as glass, Sirius drew even, grinning.

'That was brilliant.'

'Yeah, right up to the point where she comes after me with the killing curse. Speed it up, will you?'

*.*.*.*.*

'So Claudia doesn't know?' Remus asked as he dropped onto the couch, eyes blood-shot and exhausted, staring out of a face that sported a day's worth of stubble and the worst dark circles Ze had ever seen.

'I don't think so,' she sighed, wondering if her own face looked any better. 'Clive says there's a chance she might have figured it out from things he's said, but he's definitely not using his mouth for talking when Claudia's around, so I don't see when he could have dropped that many hints.' Sheepish honesty made her add, 'And if she did know, I doubt she would have been able to resist throwing it in my face earlier.'

'Yeaaaah,' Remus said slowly, scratching his jaw and leaning back into the sofa as he recalled the discussion he'd just had. 'Sirius mentioned that things got a bit…tense.'

'Don't ask me – I spent most of the conversation in the third person. But I think it's safe to say I'm not Claudia's favourite person right now.'

Remus snorted. 'I think it's safe to say you never were. But she can't get to you in here, right?' he joked, gesturing around. When Ze's only response was a lacklustre grimace, he gave up on being cheerful and went back to being himself. 'So that's her crossed off the list, which leaves us with –'

'Not a bloody thing,' Ze mumbled. There was a substantial pause as both of them digested the unfortunate truth. They were collapsed on a couch in the nearly deserted common room, having retreated after Herbology for a bit of peace. After a minute or two of silent – and extremely depressing – contemplation, Ze shook herself. 'Either Grace has been brushing up on her Leglimency, or we're missing something.' When Remus merely grunted at this, she sat up slightly and gave him a closer look. He was never the most exuberant of beings, but she thought he was looking more than usually shattered – which made her wonder just how seriously he was taking the situation with Grace. 'Remus, you feeling alright?' she asked, her forehead puckering in concern. 'Because you look –'

'Half dead, I know,' he sighed, scrubbing his hands over his face and through his hair, surfacing with a look that said the half that wasn't dead was definitely demented. 'It's – well, it's complicated, but I might have to go away for a few days.'

'Oh,' Ze murmured. 'Sorry. I, er, I hope everything's –'

'It's fine,' he interrupted gently, giving her a peaky smile.

'Right,' she nodded, feeling shamefully relieved that the conversation was over. She didn't know much about the situation, only what she'd garnered from Clive and the others, but the basic facts were that someone in Remus's family wasn't well, and it wasn't unusual for him to disappear over a weekend or even a few days during classes. It was generally acknowledged as a Touchy Subject, and Ze, who had never been the nosy sort, stayed well out of it.

'That's not good,' Remus murmured from beside her, and she turned toward the portrait hole to see Lily striding towards them with a martial light in her eyes. 'Hi Lily,' Remus said as non-combatively as possible.

'Remus,' she nodded, her eyes fixing on Ze. 'Have you got a minute?'

The nervous flopping of her stomach told Ze that this translated more properly to "have you got a century?" and she did her best to shrug nonchalantly. 'Um, yeah – what's up?'

'Let's go upstairs – no offence Remus, but girl stuff, you know?' Lily said, giving what she probably thought was a sweet smile.

Remus fought the urge to cower and nodded rapidly. 'Yeah, sure, you – uh, well, I'm sure Ze knows all about it. I'll just be…going –'

'How do you do that?' Ze asked wonderingly as she and Lily watched Remus flee toward the boys' staircase.

'Practise,' was the succinct reply. 'And the occasional death threat. You coming?'

Ze's body was rising off the couch before she'd even thought of giving it the order to move – further proof, her brain sniggered, that you really need to grow a spine. Ze countered with a mental sneer, and hurried after Lily, hoping she wasn't about to lose anything she was fond of – like, say, an ear.

Their dormitory was deserted, as long as you didn't count the plaster statue on the birdbath, but Lily made a show of checking the toilet and behind Grace's closed bed-curtains. Once she was satisfied no state secrets were being revealed, she wasted no time in getting down to brass tacks. 'Don't think I haven't noticed you making yourself scarce today,' she informed Ze, pointing to the nearest four-poster in what Ze assumed was a silent command to sit.

'Hi Lily,' Ze sighed, deciding she'd rather stand. 'Yeah, my day's been rubbish, thanks for asking - how's yours?'

'Resistance is futile!' There was a pause, during which Ze regarded Lily with pursed lips and arched brows. 'Sorry,' the redhead blushed, gaze darting away, 'what I meant was, this is not a joke and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't treat it as one. There's something funny going on, and I intend to get to the bottom of it,' she continued, a bit of the passion – and the cool - resurfacing. 'Don't think I didn't notice where you went off to last night – if it hadn't been for patrols, you wouldn't have left this room until you'd explained what the hell was going on. But,' she snapped with a toss of her hair, 'we're going to get that taken care of right now. First, I want to know what that was between you and Grace last night, and second, I want to know why you had to run over to tell Sirius about it, and third I want the truth about you and turning people into frogs.' She paused and gave Ze a sharp, assessing look. 'Do I need to make a threat at this point, or was the glare enough?'

Ze's lips twitched. 'The glare was enough. But,' she added more seriously, 'before you start girding your loins for battle, there's something you've got to understand.' She paused for a deep, fortifying breath, trying to formulate a detailed explanation of why some things just weren't for sharing. In the end, what came out of her mouth was: 'I can't tell you what's going on with Grace.'

'What?! But –'

'But nothing,' Ze said firmly, deciding that as she'd started short and simple, she might as well finish that way. 'It isn't my secret, alright?' she explained, hoping Lily would understand. 'If it was my business I'd tell you, but it isn't, so…I can't.'

Green eyes narrowed. 'This has something to do with Potter, doesn't it?'

'My lips are sealed,' Ze said with an apologetic shrug.

The mouth was turned down at the edges now, and fingers were tapping against a folded arm. 'You're very loyal, aren't you?'

'I'm not sure you mean that as a compliment,' Ze chuckled. 'But, generally, yes – it augments my poor judgement and complete lack of sense.

'And given who you're loyal to, it'll land you in prison one of these days.'

'Mmm, probably as an accessory to criminal immaturity and general indecency. Now do you want to know about turning people into frogs or not?'

'Yes,' Lily said, looking surprised : clearly she'd thought this would be the portion of the conversation that wouldn't go so well. 'But I thought you said you wouldn't show me how –'

'No, I said I couldn't show you,' Ze interrupted, her pulse speeding up: she really was going to do this, no matter what the consequences were, wasn't she? 'There's a difference – an important one.'

'Look, I've been thinking about what you said yesterday,' Lily began sensibly as Ze turned toward her bed, 'and if it wasn't a spell, then it probably had something to do with the location you were in –'

'Yeah, that's what we thought too, at first,' Ze replied as she rummaged in the depths of her wardrobe. 'And I really, really wish it was true, because that would definitely make things much nicer and save me loads of trouble. But, unfortunately, it isn't,' she said, a triumphant note entering her voice as her hands closed on the spine of Montague's English Hybrids.

'If you're going to tell me that it was some bizarre, elemental magic awakening in your blood at precisely the right moment, I'm going to have to say bollo-' Lily stopped dead as she read the title on the book Ze was now thrusting towards her. Exasperation morphed into resigned pity. 'Oh, you have gone mad then.'

'I haven't!'

'Ze, that's a book about faeries –'

'Yes, I know, but just hear me out,' she said, a faint note of desperation creeping in. 'Please?' She proffered the book once more. 'Page one fifty seven. Just read it, Lily. You'll see.'

Eyeing Ze with a great deal of consternation, Lily slowly took the book and flipped to the proscribed page. Soon she was completely engrossed, and Ze, feeling oddly as though an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders, settled on her bed and waited. It didn't take long: the page was short and the concept – once you'd got past the utter disbelieving – wasn't difficult to grasp. Lily's mouth was properly hanging open when she looked back up. 'Oh my god,' she said slowly. 'Oh my god.'

*.*.*.*.*

Why, Sirius wondered, did anyone bother with Arithmancy? Clever Remus, bunking off – wish we'd done the same, his brain grumbled bitterly. Honestly, we're going to have to start clearing out the How to Escape a Desert Island With This Spoon plan if you want there to be room for all that quantum theory stuff. Promising his brain that it only had to hold onto the knowledge until the exam, Sirius dragged himself away from his final lesson of the day, heartily wished that he had quidditch training to look forward to: he could have used an exhaustive, mind-numbing, body-pummelling hour or three of physical exertion. But, in yet another manifestation of the universe's desire to torture him, Hufflepuff had the pitch booked and Gryffindor weren't on until Wednesday. Which left him with two options: beat his head in with the help of one of the castle walls, or find Ze and go running. Thanks to Ze's preferred jogging attire, it was a surprisingly difficult decision. But, after ten minutes of failing to find a bludgeoning surface at a suitable height, he decided he really could just take the easy way out. And anyway, Ze in her running kit was an inspirational sort of torture, almost religious, really – so it was probably good for him, right? This thought had him turning into the Charms corridor and breaking into a run. Because if he warmed up by sprinting to Gryffindor tower, maybe he could finally keep up…

'Bollocks!' Cursing inventively, he just managed to execute a trip-trip-leap and skid to a halt after rebounding off of the wall, avoiding the slender figure that had stepped out of the classroom to block his path.

'Someone's in a hurry,' Grace said lazily, eyeing him from beneath heavily blackened lashes.

Panting slightly and rubbing his abused shoulder, Sirius stared down at his former girlfriend and tried to get his brain to focus on her rather than Ze's legs. After thirty seconds of futility, he gave up. 'Yeah, sorry – I'm on my way to meet someone,' he said hurriedly, making to step around her.

'But I was hoping we'd finally have a chance to chat,' she smiled, turning with him, blue eyes wide and sweet and innocent - and, just there at the very back, pitiless as a snake's.

The euphoric rush of Ze and running drained away completely at this, leaving him suddenly exhausted. With a sigh he crossed his arms: he could never claim to understand Grace, but he had enough experience with her preferred operating methods to know that this was no chance encounter…which meant it would be best to just get it over with – she'd never resorted to stalking him before, and he didn't fancy her starting now. 'What did you want to talk about?'

'Oh, nothing in particular,' she said lightly, her smile stretching as she decided she'd won. 'We just haven't had a chance to catch up lately, have we? It's been ages since we talked.'

'Yeah, it has – but then I thought that was because you'd heartlessly chucked me and I'd realised how much nicer life is without you around.' Sirius put his head on one side and made a show of thinking. 'Or was it just because you'd failed to publicly humiliate me to your satisfaction and were sulking until you got another chance?' His brows arched in mock innocence. 'Sorry, I can't seem to remember.'

Grace blinked once, and was suddenly regarding him out of much shrewder eyes. 'Are you implying that I think I have another chance to…publicly humiliate you?' she finally asked, a lilting hint of danger in her voice.

Sirius wasn't sure if frustration could kill you, but he had a feeling he was close to finding out. 'Can we, for once, just say what we mean? Please? Because we both know you're here to make some nebulous threat, and that I'm going to have no idea what you're actually saying and therefore provide you with an unsatisfactory shaking-of-boots, and we're both going to go off confused and disappointed. So please, whatever you're here to tell me, just say it.'

To his discomfort, Grace didn't glare or pout or use any of the traditional weapons he had been preparing for. Instead, she crossed her own arms and a small, smug smile flitted across her face. 'You've finally grown a bit of a backbone where I'm concerned,' she said silkily. 'Naughty. I might even like it. But,' she continued, her eyes hardening, 'we'll just have to see, won't we? Because you don't want me to be honest Sirius, not right now, not with what I know. You wouldn't do that to your –'

With a roll of his eyes, Sirius turned and walked away. 'I'm not interested, Grace,' he called without looking back. 'You want to play lies and lovers, you can do it with someone else. I'm through with you,' he informed her, realising that it was finally true, and a broad grin stretched across his face as he added, 'So will you please just fuck off?'

*.*.*.*

'But…but…'

'But I wasn't the one in the wrong place at the wrong time – Colin was,' Ze said with a rueful smile. 'Weird, isn't it?'Lily, who had collapsed onto Ze's bed with the Montague book, was staring into the middle distance, obviously in shock. 'All that stuff – about,' she scrabbled in the book and read aloud, 'about "occurrences straight out of story-books playing merry hell with your life" – is that true?'

'I guess,' Ze shrugged. 'I mean, I turned Colin into a frog, didn't I?'

'Yes, but – well - but where's the story about the girl turning the bloke into a frog?' Lily asked, regaining a bit of her usual cool logic. 'Doesn't it usually happen the other way around? And isn't it usually a good thing – I mean, he turns out to be a prince, doesn't he?'

'"Usually" being the key word,' Ze pointed out. 'Because we aren't talking about faerie stories, we're talking about life - as in a normal, every-day, Bob's your uncle life. The point is these sorts of things, happening to the average person, don't guarantee a happy ending – in fact, they sort of make one impossible. There are all sorts of examples in here, see?' Turning back several pages in the book – which, after last night, she practically knew off by heart – she located the proper paragraph. 'Here – this is what he says after talking about the woman who turned all her husbands into pigs: "though at first such abilities may seem charming and useful, their unpredictability will soon become an annoyance and eventually a danger, preventing those of fey lineage from sustaining personal relationships". Doesn't get much clearer than that, does it? If Old Montague had his way, we'd all be tattooed across the forehead with "Doesn't Breed Well With Others".

'Yeah, but probably her husbands were all pigs anyway, they just weren't the proper shape,' Lily shrugged. 'And that's hundreds of years ago, isn't it? I mean, whatever blood you've got – if you've even got any – from some faerie, it would have to be from ages ago. By now it would be so diluted there's no chance it would ever do anything,' she pointed out sensibly.

'I think that might be why what I've got going on is more of an inconvenience than a full-blown natural disaster,' Ze admitted. 'Because, okay, so I've turned Colin into a frog, right? But then I kiss him again, and he turns right back – weird, definitely concerning, maybe even a bit mad, but not precisely a disaster.'

'Not a disaster?' Lily gawped. 'How is turning a person into a fr-'

'Don't get me wrong,' Ze interrupted hastily, knowing how bizarre she sounded. 'Really, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever possibly happen too, at first. But then I read about some of the things that have happened to people and, well…'

'Just what are we talking about?' Lily asked slowly.

Ze tapped her fingers nervously on the cover of the book. 'Er, well, spitting up diamonds and pearls when you talk, for a start, and setting things on fire with your "lustful gaze" – whatever that means. Then there are the people that get stuck speaking in rhymes for their entire lives, or, worse, singing. Or just lie down for a nap and wake up a hundred years later. Think about that for a second - you'd have one day to do it all, in every century: get up, have a bath, find someone to marry and a house to live in, have a nice party, then go to bed and start all over again the next morning. And then there's something about being able to control the beats of the – where was it – yeah, "all the beasts of the fields, and creatures of forest and sky shall follow at thy heels and obey the commands of thy voice" – see, how awful would that be, having weasels and pigeons and stuff following you around?'

'But none of that's ever happened to you, right?' It sounded perilously like Lily was double-checking for her own safety.

'No, 'course not,' Ze replied airily. 'Well…' Lily glanced quickly around in the event of an inconvenient badger. 'Okay, so you know the caretaker's cat, Popsy?'

There was a pause for thought. 'Er – no.'

'You know that really foul, absolutely disgusting stench that hangs around sometimes?'

'Yes,' Lily replied immediately.

'Well, that's Popsy – apparently he eats the odd student, but, the point is, he followed me. Saturday night.'

'Followed you?'

'Yeah – all over the castle. It was like he knew where we were going to be, every time. We couldn't get rid of him – he was right on our heels!'

'Er, does he technically count as a beast of the fields or a creature of the forest?'

'Uuhmmm…there might be a bit of bear in him somewhere?'

'Okay, so that's definitely not good,' Lily sighed, rubbing her forehead. 'I wish that book could tell you why all of this suddenly started happening now.' Ze did her best not to look guilty, but her ears gave her away, flushing a not-so-delicate crimson. 'Ooooh–' Lily said, spotting the blush. 'So it does -'

'Look, it's really stupid –'

'But it says something, doesn't it!' Lily cried. 'It says something about why –'

'Yeah, but it's complete rubbish, really, because –'

'Let me see –'

'No!'

'Let me see!' A brief scuffling match ensued, and Ze discovered what it felt like to be James on an almost daily basis. The Evans family, Ze felt, had gone a bit overboard when it came to breeding for Elbows. Lily emerged victorious, clutching the book. 'What page?' she demanded, and, when Ze didn't reply immediately, gave a mighty jab with her left arm.

'One hundred ninety eight,' Ze groaned, flopping backward onto her bed and staring morosely up at the canopy as she listened to the pages of the book flipping. Honestly – wasn't it enough for Lily to know that it was happening at all? Did she have to know why?

Suddenly Lily's head was snapping up. 'But – Ze – this –' shaking madly, she ran a finger across the page and read aloud: '"Rather than appearing in adolescence as the corporeal self matures, symptoms and abilities associated with fey blood seem to be connected with emotional awakening and romantic attachment, and therefore prove most inconvenient as they frequently manifest during amorous encounters.' The redhead looked up, eyes huge, and Ze felt her stomach bottom out. 'But that would mean you're in lov-'

'In love,' Ze sighed. 'With Sirius.'

A/N –

do i actually need to write one of these? have you completely missed the Main Event? if you have, then i'm a lot worse at this than i thought...

so what will happen now? will Clive come to his senses? will Grace turn to violence? will Ze tell someone besides Lily how she feels? and what about Rob's letter...oh yes, and bananas...

so how do we feel about this? is Ze ready to be in love? is she? really? so much to do and so little time to do it in :(

thanks so much for reading, and to all for the reviews - they help so much! i had attempted to reply to all from chapter 30, but it got away from me as usual - i will try again! please feel free to leave comments, criticisms and questions - and favourite quotes are always welcome :)

mental xx


	32. The Equilibrists

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 32: The Equilibrists

'In love,' Ze sighed. 'With Sirius.'

'Er…actually, I was thinking more of Colin,' Lily interjected, rather hesitantly, into a very awkward pause.

Ze, who had been bracing herself for gales of mocking laughter, had snorted out a disbelieving 'Colin?' before she'd even had time to think. 'What makes you think I fancy Colin?'

'Well, it was him you turned into a frog,' Lily pointed out delicately. 'Not Sirius.'

Ze, who frankly hadn't been expecting this particular brand of resistance, stared at her, aghast. 'And you think the fact that I kissed him into a frog means that I'm in love with him?'

'Well that is the general idea behind the transforming power of the first kiss, isn't it?' was Lily's entirely-too-sensible answer. 'You haven't transformed Sirius into anything weird, have you?'

'Well –'

'So if this is your long-lost fairy blood acting out, manifesting itself during amorous encounters, then logically the only person who gets to you is Colin Cross,' Lily said with depressing rationality.

'Well I haven't had any "amorous encounters" with Sirius, have I?' Ze pointed out, grasping at straws.

'Noooo….not yet,' Lily allowed, wondering when Ze was going to realise that she was being drawn out. Not that the redhead doubted Ze's claim of Sirius attachment (honestly, she couldn't help herself), but the chance was too good to pass up. Now Ze was glowering, arms crossed, on the end of the bed, and Lily decided to push a little further. 'Maybe there's a reason you haven't gotten involved with Sirius. Maybe you aren't supposed to like him – maybe it would dangerous to your health.'

'I am not the Lady of bloody Shalott!' Ze huffed.

'Good, because we're fresh out of rowboats.'

'You aren't listening –'

'Just be rational,' Lily instructed, fighting to hide her smile.

'Rational?' Ze cried. 'Why should I be rational? You never tell Serena to be rational – you just give her chocolate!'

'Yes, well, every relationship should have something nice about it, even if it is at the end.' Looking marginally embarrassed, Lily added, 'And to be perfectly honest, I haven't got any at the moment.'

'No rowboats, no chocolate – and you call yourself prepared,' Ze sneered.

'Ze!' Lily cried. 'Focus! You – kiss – Colin – frog.'

And this was finally too much for Ze: she had put herself out there, declared her interest, admitted her addiction, and all Lily wanted to talk about was Colin bloody Cross. 'I don't care!' she burst out. 'I don't care if he eats flies and has got webbed feet! I don't care! This is about Sirius!'

'Yes, well –' Lily began, only to be interrupted by:

'I bloody well fancy him, okay!'

'Yes, well, we all know that,' Lily said with a roll of her eyes.

'No, I am not jo-' Ze blinked. 'You…you what?'

Heaving a sigh, Lily folded her arms across her chest and began to explain. 'I was just - ' One look at Ze's face told her now was not the time to admit to piss-taking. So she tried to respect the gravity of the situation and told the delicious, tawdry truth. 'Look, it's painfully obvious that you fancy him and he fancies you, okay? If you and Sirius don't get it together, seven plagues will visit themselves on Egypt, the sun will begin to set in the east, aerodynamically-unsound mammals will develop avian tendencies – the point is, you're meant to be. Kismet. Soul mates.' Noticing Ze's blank, dazed expression Lily threw up her hands, deciding to just say it plainly. 'You're completely in lust with one another, and if the sex doesn't kill you, you might just have enough in common to make it a stable relationship.'

Ze opened her mouth…and promptly snapped it closed as the enormity of what she was feeling welled up in her gut, threatening to turn solid and make a dash for the outside world. She could only stare, eyes widening and fingers shaking, as the situation solidified around her, the implications of that one, simple statement becoming utterly and irrevocably real. Ze Meridian had a crush on a boy. Somehow, she'd got her feelings tangled up, her time and energy and emotions invested in something that didn't have rules, that didn't have boundaries, that didn't even have a foreseeable end. This wasn't a sport match, it wasn't even school - there was absolutely no one to call time or foul. Well, no one except herself. And she had the sickening feeling that in crushes, there were no such things as fouls and clock-stopping – and even if there were, she would have absolutely no idea when to call them. She was officially flying blind…and it was looking like she'd forgot her broomstick.

'Ze?' Dimly aware that Lily was tapping her shoulder, Ze shook herself. 'Ze, are you alright?' Lily repeated, all signs of amusement gone. 'Only you look like you're about to faint –'

'I've never done this before,' Ze whispered, her eyes slowly coming up to meet Lily's. With a large, painful swallow she repeated, 'I've really never done this before.'

'What – you've,' Lily paused, the concern in her eyes deepening as they narrowed, then dissipating as they widened rapidly, morphing into wonder as the full implications of the statement hit her. 'Y- you've never fancied a bloke before?'

Ze's lips trembled, her stomach quaking. 'Not…really…no,' she managed to choke out.

'What, not even a tiny crush?' Lily gaped.

'No! I mean – well, I've always thought Zeke was pretty fit, but he's too quiet and anyway he's best mates with Rob and that's a little too close for safety and the rest, well, I've always known them, haven't I?' Teeth chattering, Ze stood and began to pace. 'And you really can't get all warm and fuzzy about a guy you've seen eat an entire kilo of toffee in one go, can you? I mean his teeth were stuck together for days -'

'Yeah,' Lily murmured, dazed, 'and he still tasted like it when he kissed me on the train home.'

'Not that I've ever fancied James, of course,' Ze hurried to say. 'That's just, you know, an example.'

'But – come on,' Lily was saying, shaking her head. 'There must've been someone,' she babbled. 'You're only human – there must've been someone you've liked –'

'Who? Who was I supposed to like?' Ze exploded. 'Who, Lily? They've been my friends since the first day on the train! And the ones that weren't my friends either played against us a quidditch or had no idea I was alive, much less in possession of breasts – so who was I supposed to fancy? My best friend Jack, who's miles away? No? How about Clive?' she snorted sarcastically. 'Not likely. Believe me Lily, there's a reason mystery is so attractive, and it's because not knowing all of someone's faults up front makes him that much easier to fall for.' Her fingers raking through her hair, Ze shook her head madly. 'You need a bit of charm and a bit of excitement, a bit of complete confusion, because it gives you time to get emotionally invested before you're actually familiar with your investment. And once the stars are out of your eyes you're already in too deep to really mind that he's an immature, prank-mad narcissist who farts like a hippogriff.'

Lily's head tipped slowly to one side. 'You really are in love with Sirius.'

Ze fidgeted, unable to meet her gaze. 'Actually, I was trying for an example you could relate to,' she admitted. 'Like, say…James.'

'Potter?' gasped a revolted Lily. There followed a moment of thought. 'Is it really that bad?'

'He can do the entire school song,' Ze sighed, carding her fingers through her hair, long ago resigned to the awful truth. 'It's strangely fascinating…from about a quidditch pitch away. Any closer, and we're talking mustard gas.'

Lily's face contorted. 'Ew.'

'You get used to it,' Ze shrugged. 'Once you've invested in the proper protective equipment, of course.'

They stared into the distance for a moment, and then Lily shook herself, presumably to dissipate an imaginary stench. 'Forget Potter – this is about you and Sirius.'

'You think I'm absolutely barking mad, don't you?' Ze asked morosely.

'No, I think it's about time one of you came to your senses,' was the dry, vaguely amused reply. And then Lily remembered that Ze was likely in the midst of a meta-emotional crisis and that laughing would be Very Bad Form. 'For what it's worth,' she said slowly, 'I think you've got good taste. I mean, Black's hardly the perfect specimen,' honesty made her add, 'but you could definitely do worse.'

Ze nodded absently, fingers plucking at the seam in her duvet, thoughts clearly elsewhere. And then she asked, voice much shrewder than her expression, 'Earlier, when you said that of course you all knew I fancied him…were you telling the truth?'

To Lily's experienced feet, this felt like very shaky ground indeed. Serena she could have teased, but Ze was an entirely different kettle of fish. 'Well… you do seem to spend most of your spare time together,' she hedged, deciding that this was enough of the truth to suffice. 'But it really doesn't matter what I think, does it? The point is that you're the one who likes him - so when did you realise?'

'Oh, ages ago,' Ze shrugged. 'Days, at least. More like weeks, actually.' She paused, a small, self-deprecating smile curving her lips. 'I'm an idiot though, so it didn't connect until last night. The fact that I'm pretty much arse over tits for him, I mean. Which is complete rubbish, because neither one of us has time for it now, and everything is complicated and I really just can't be bothered.'

Lily, who had been nodding supportively through the early, contemplative portions of the speech, snapped to attention at the decidedly nonchalant tone of the last sentence. 'Can't be bothered?' the redhead positively screeched. 'What d'you mean, can't be bothered - Zenobia Meridian, if you can't be arsed to fancy Sirius Black, you're -'

'It's complicated! Ze shouted back, quietening down when she realised she had an echo. 'It's complicated,' she repeated in a more normal tone. 'All sorts of stuff is going on right now, you know?'

'No, I don't, because it's all sorts of stuff you won't tell me about,' Lily replied acidly.

'Well, you'll probably find out soon enough, so don't worry,' Ze sighed, rubbing her eyes and thinking of bets and reptiles and vengeful ex-girlfriends.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Why does everyone ask that question?' Ze asked the heavens, hands upraised. 'When has that question ever got a reasonable, coherent answer?'

'Don't make me resort to the Elbow.'

'Don't make me cower in fear.'

'You already are.'

'Well, you've got scary elbows, haven't you? Now can we please talk about summat else?'

'Sure,' Lily said brightly. 'Like how you're going to tell Sirius that you-'

'No,' Ze said flatly. 'No no no no no. That is a genuinely shit idea -'

'Why not?' Lily cried. 'You might be shy and innocent, but I've seen the way he looks at you, and he's not just thinking about quidditch and homework. He's completely into you, okay? There is no possible way –'

'Don't you dare say it, Lily Evans! Don't you dare say that out loud,' Ze shouted, slapping both palms over her ears. 'The minute you say "there's no possible way it can't work out" the whole thing will go tits up.' With a snort she added, 'And the way my luck is going, he'll decide he'd rather date Filch.'

'Oh, give him better taste than that – at least give him Slughorn!'

They stared at one another for a moment, neither quite able to believe what had just come out of Lily's mouth, and then burst out laughing.

'Yurgh – Slughorn!'

'Think about that moustache! Wobble wobble wobble –'

'Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "tortures of detention" doesn't it?'

'Aggh! No more!' Ze begged. 'No more! I'm in the middle of my first real crush, and I'd rather not lose him to a walrus twice our age.'

Lily hiccoughed out the last of her giggles, sobering valiantly. 'Your first real crush – wish mine had been this good. I wasted it on some sticky boy called Andrew who used to steal my hair bows.'

'I never wore hair bows,' Ze said solemnly, 'maybe that's why.'

A snigger escaped Lily's mouth, and then a sigh. 'I guess it's sort of nice, in a way. At least now you know why you like him – 'cos he's smart and fit and stuff, I mean.'

'I'm sure Andy was too,' Ze grinned. 'And I'm not even really sure why I fancy Sirius.' Unconsciously her grin melted into a small, wistful smile. 'I just know I do.'

Feeling faintly envious, Lily tapped her fingers on her folded knees. 'Maybe that's the point, eh? You don't know why you fancy someone so you spend falling in love with him finding out.'

Ze cut her eyes sideways, and in moments they were both howling with laughter again. 'Okay, Lady Miranda,' Ze snorted, wiping at the tears streaming down her cheeks. 'Seriously, write that one down – we might need to have a laugh again sometime.'

'Oh piss off,' Lily giggled. 'It wasn't that bad.'

'Said the prostitute to the priest,' Ze quipped, still laughing.

'So what are you going to do?' Lily asked, brushing off her own cheeks and settling back into the role of the confidant.

'Do?' Ze asked blankly.

'Yes – do,' Lily repeated, as if to a child. 'What are you going to do about going after Sirius?'

'Going after – bloody hell Lily, I'm not hunting him down and scalping him,' Ze said nervously. 'I've just realised I'm in- well, in serious like with him, yeah?'

'You said love,' Lily pointed out, suppressing a smug smile.

'It was a dramatic moment,' Ze groused. 'It had to be "love" or "terminal illness", and a brain tumour just didn't fit.'

'Love can be an illness.'

'But hopefully it doesn't involve boils. Can-'

'Will you be serious?' Lily asked plaintively.

'I am!' Ze cried, half-laughing. 'I just don't see the point in all this soul-searching stuff. Okay, so I'm not precisely sure how to handle this. The point is, he's not going anywhere and neither am I, so I have got time to figure it out.'

'You need a strategy.'

'I need to think. For more than a day,' she added when Lily opened her mouth. 'Look, I'm not entirely sure I believe all this rubbish about fey blood and stuff – I mean, I do, but at the same time…more than slightly weird, right? But it's important. And, before I start "going after" Sirius, with a war party or without, I need to know what it means. Because it really won't be fair if our first kiss ends with him as a mongoose or something, will it?'

'No,' Lily said slowly. 'But it would be really funny for the rest of us…'

'So sweet and so sadistic,' Ze sighed, shaking her head. 'But you see what I mean?'

'Yes, I see, but –'

'But that's how it's got to be. That, and Sirius has got entirely too much to worry about right now without my pathetic attempts at seduction,' Ze sighed.

'Ze, he looks at you like there's no one else in the room,' Lily said, half amused and half envious. 'He wants you so badly the rest of the school can feel it.'

Ze grimaced, aware that Lily was right about the wanting – just not the specificity of his wanting Ze. Sure, Sirius wanted her…along with everyone else wearing a skirt. He'd probably go for Rob at this point, if they could talk him into a kilt. And that's the nastiest thing you've thought about all day, including Slughorn's moustache. Quiet brain, or it's abstract calculus. 'I'm still taking my time,' she shrugged, aware that she couldn't just tell Lily "well, yes, once he's lost this stupid bet I'll have him". 'It'll be better that way. And you and Serena can train me up,' she added as incentive.

To which Lily's eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'You mean Serena can know about this?'

'Well…' Ze hedged. 'Maybe not right away?'

Lily nodded, smiling. 'Probably for the best – she doesn't mean any harm, but –'

She broke off when, as though conjured by their conversation, Serena's voice could be heard on the stairs saying, 'Brilliant! Did you see his face?' A snorting giggle followed, and both Lily and Ze recognised Dorcas.

'Rob,' they chorused. 'That letter – must've been delivered,' Ze groaned.

'Poor bastard,' Lily sighed. 'Here,' she added, pushing the Montague book, which was resting forgotten by her knees, across the bed toward Ze. 'Might want to tuck that –'

But to her surprise Ze left the book on the centre of her bed, standing and stepping toward the door. 'No, leave that out.'

'But don't you –' Lily tried again, just as the door burst open to reveal Serena and Dorcas, hands clapped over their mouths to stifle their giggles.

'Oh my god, you've just missed it,' Serena squealed. 'He's talking to himself –'

'Ha! That'll teach him, the smug bastard,' Dorcas crowed, kicking the door shut and doing a merry little dance.

'You've got the second one ready, haven't you?' Serena asked avidly, tossing her bag onto her bed and toeing off her shoes.

'Of course,' Dorcas grinned. 'Ready for delivery with tomorrow's post. He'll have no idea who they're coming from.'

'They?' Lily repeated. 'You mean something's in the plural?'

'You'll see,' Dorcas promised with the sort of smile a Medici assassin would have practised in her mirror.

'What've you two been doing?' Serena asked, gesturing to Lily, who was still sat on the end of Ze's bed. 'Having a chat?'

'Yeah,' Ze replied before Lily could, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. 'And waiting for you to come back.'

Lily, who had been expecting something much less suave in the prevarication department, arched her brows. 'For us?' Dorcas asked, dropping her books onto her bed and sounding much more like her normal self. 'What's happened?' Her gaze was on Lily, and the redhead could only shrug to show that she was as ignorant as anyone.

'Oh, nothing,' Ze said nonchalantly, reaching across her bed to pick up the Montague book and flashing a decidedly mischievous grin. 'I'd just been doing some reading, and remembered a bit of wishful thinking about running around skyclad.' Lily's jaw dropped, and Dorcas's eyes widened exponentially behind her glasses. 'Serena, you might want to get over here – I think we're going to need your opinion on druid circles…'

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius was on the verge of scaling Gryffindor tower and climbing through Ze's window when she finally came tripping down the girls' staircase, already an hour too late for supper. When Sirius had returned to his dormitory after his run-in with Grace, Remus had mentioned Lily, a smile, and "girl stuff" in response to his query about Ze. Based on confirmed statistics and personal experience, Sirius hadn't been entirely sure Ze would ever be seen again. And yet, here she was. Sirius's first instinct was to check her for bodily injuries, but he decided that might be a little melodramatic. So he settled for skidding to a halt in front of her, grabbing on to her shoulders, and saying, 'Are you okay?' in a desperate tone of voice.

'Uuuuuh….yes?' she hazarded, taking in the worried eyes and death grip, hoping she wasn't blushing as furiously as she thought she was. All day she'd had nerves, classes and Clive to distract her from his presence; now all she had was Sirius, bodily contact, and recent discussions of semi-public nudity.

'Sorry,' Sirius mumbled, loosening his hold. 'I just – Remus – said Lily came and got you –'

'She wanted to talk,' Ze chuckled, 'not beam me to the mothership. It's nice that you were worried though,' she added with a pat to his arm. A pat to his arm? her subconscious shrieked. Put down Fordyce's Sermons and snog him already! Battling down the internal voices demanding that she do something intelligent for a change, she smiled at him. 'You alright?'

'Yeah, yeah – course.' He said, smiling manically back. And then, 'I told off Grace.'

'You –' Ze froze, trying to decide how obvious it would be if she pinched herself to see if she was dreaming. All thoughts of ancient, primitive rituals of female empowerment had completely dissipated in favour of: YES! 'You did what?' she finally squeaked.

'Grace. I told her to fuck off,' he beamed.

'That's brilliant!'

'I know!'

'When? Where? How?'

'Well,' Sirius said, nudging her toward a sofa and dropping down beside her, 'I was coming back from Arithmancy and thinking how I might see if you wanted to go running, and she just jumped out at me – complete ambush. And she started being Grace, and I just told her I wasn't interested in listening anymore and could she please just say whatever it was and….then I told her I was over it and she could fuck off.' He was grinning like a kid who'd just lost his first tooth, and Ze had the overpowering urge to throw herself at him.

Except she was sure she'd elbow something sensitive, and then maybe start kissing him, and probably he would be confused. So she settled laughing and slinging her arm around his shoulders and leaning her head in to half of a hug. 'She didn't have anything to say back, did she?'

'No – bet she was gaping like a fish though. Not that I turned around and looked,' he added, smugly proud of himself.

For a long moment Ze stared at the fire burning cheerily in the hearth, feeling slightly breathless. 'So you're really over her?' she heard herself ask in a perfectly steady voice.

'Completely,' was the reply as Sirius settled more comfortably into the couch, mirroring her posture and draping his arm over her shoulders. It was warm and cosy and Ze felt something bubble up inside her that might have been excitement over the fact that Sirius was finally done with Grace, just when Ze realised she fancied him for herself. And then Sirius went and said, 'I think she might be bent on cruel and complete revenge now though, so probably you should watch out for her.'

The little bubble collapsed with a ringing pop! and Ze fought not to heave a sigh. 'Cruel and complete – no chance of unusual?'

'This is Grace. Not that she'll be going after you or anything,' Sirius said, squeezing her shoulder comfortingly. 'Mostly it's just me…' his brow creased. 'Well, and all my friends and the people that I care about, so, yeah…definitely you,' he trailed off. 'Shit.'

'Do you know if Zeke and Allister have talked with their girlfriends yet?' Ze asked, attempting to sound as normal as possible given the internal shivers set off by sharing so much body heat.

'Er…maybe?' Sirius guessed, wondering if he could get away with actually stroking her shoulder, or just circling a bit with his thumb.

'Well, as soon as that's done, you really don't have much to worry about besides a few blushes,' she pointed out.

'Yeah, but…' Sirius said faintly, his gaze locked on the dancing flames in the hearth.

'She'll have won?' Ze guessed.

'Yeah,' he nodded, lips pulled down at the corners. 'I know it's stupid, but yeah, she'll have won.'

He scrubbed his opposite hand through his hair as Ze sighed and dropped her head briefly to his shoulder. 'Then we'll figure out how to shut her up.' It would have been a very nice moment if her stomach hadn't chosen that moment to let out a massive growl. 'Er…wish I could do the same here,' she mumbled, rubbing a hand over the region as though that would soothe the raging complaints.

'Didn't make it down to dinner?' Sirius asked, as though he hadn't spent the entire evening watching and waiting for her.

'Not quite,' she grimaced. 'We lost track of time.'

'We?' he asked, tilting his head to look at her curiously. 'Who's we – you and the Vestal Virgins?' he asked, nodding toward the girls' staircase.

She cocked an eyebrow naughtily. 'Vestal?'

'Yeah, it means –' he broke off when he saw the grin. 'Cheeky,' he said sarcastically.

'You love it,' she teased, mussing his hair as she extracted herself from his grip, trying her best to look nonchalant about it. Standing now, she grinned down at him. 'I'm supposed to be getting us food – your introduction to the kitchens staff is proving invaluable.'

'What, you've left Dorcas and Evans hunched over the battle plan whilst you fetch the take-away?' he shot back, resisting the urge to grab the hand closest to him and pull her back down. When she didn't reply, he felt his eyes narrow. 'Wait – so there really is a plan? What're you up to-'

'You aren't the only ones with secrets, you know,' she laughed, backing away. 'We get into trouble, too.'

'No you don't,' he replied automatically.

'Just because we don't get caught? Go find Zeke and Alli and see what's going on,' she charged him before he could pry further. 'And then go to bed.'

'Yes Mum,' he said with a roll of his eyes and a grin. 'D'you want to tuck me in?' he added with a suggestive waggle of his brows, just as she reached the portrait hole.

And, for once, Ze gave it back. 'Ah, but then neither one of us would get any sleep. Night Sirius – sweet dreams.' And, with a wink, she was gone.

Did she just flirt back? Sirius asked himself desperately. Did she? I think she did, but – no, she did, that was definitely flirting and –

Oh shut it, came the surly voice of his common sense. You're cuddling nothing but your pillow tonight, so you might as well start the thinking about icebergs now. It was decidedly depressing. But, dismal as the truth was, it couldn't dampen Sirius's grin: he had told off Grace. And Ze had flirted with him. Best night ever.

*.*.*.*.*

Ze dropped the enormous pile of sandwiches onto her bed and settled the jug of pumpkin juice on the table. 'What've I missed?' she asked, leaning forward to see the parchment Serena was busily scribbling on.

'Well, according to my Ye Olde Druide Artes: Modern Magic, Arcane Spelling and Lily's Astronomy homework, tomorrow night should be perfect,' the brunette beamed.

'And Dorcas has got some stuff she reckons will work as the sacred armbands,' Lily added, 'so all we'll need is a bonfire.'

'And a stick to ward off hedgehogs,' Dorcas added sensibly, emerging from her trunk with a wad of silvery tissue.

The other three mouthed "hedgehogs?", and, with a collective shrug, decided not to pursue the subject. 'You're sure tomorrow night will work?' Ze asked, unwrapping a sandwich and passing it to Serena. 'Only it seems a little close, you know, not much time for planning.'

'No, it's seriously perfect –'

'The constellation positions are prime – Venus is ascending -' Lily rattled off, rummaging through what appeared to be weeks' worth of excruciatingly detailed astronomy charts.

'And the moon is full,' Dorcas added, nodding as she re-joined the group and accepted a sandwich. 'We won't have this particular astrological alignment for another twenty years.'

'In other words, if we're going to take all our clothes off and dance around a fire to summon up the spirits of nature for luck, prosperity and fecundity, we'd better do it now?'

'Exactly,' Lily grinned. 'Now give me one of those sandwiches – we've got dance steps to practise, and I'm not doing it on an empty stomach.'

*.*.*.*.*

'Oi – wake up!'

A pillow connected solidly with the side of Sirius's head, and he groaned, burrowing deeper into his bed.

'What time is it?' Remus's voice, thick with sleep, said from the bed to Sirius's right.

'Eight,' came the reply, in James's none-too-happy tones. 'We're fucked,' he added, as though the rest of them didn't know it. But, with his typical ability to not be bothered by trifling things such as timetables, James didn't sound worried in the slightest.

Sirius, with the sort of groan usually associated with monstrous beasts emerging from the primordial ooze, rolled over and sat up. 'For fuck's sake,' he mumbled as a sunbeam stabbed him directly in the eye for the second morning in a row. 'Who the fuck's opened the fucking curtains? Again?'

'Morning Pads,' James and Remus yawned together, not in the least fazed by this show of shockingly foul language. 'Will you look at him?' James said to Remus, who was stretching by Peter's bed. 'I've thumped him three times and he's still asleep.'

'I-i-incredible,' Remus said through a massive yawn. A few moments later Sirius had staggered out of bed and was standing with them, staring down at Peter's comatose form.

A snore started deep in the dumpy boy's belly, setting up an echo in the small intestine, rumbling upwards toward the stomach and giving an enthusiastic rev as it breached the oesophagus. With a thunderous cycling of the lungs it blew into the upper respiratory system and exploded into the world like a juggernaut engine playing a duet with a foghorn. 'Bloody hell,' Sirius breathed, 'how does he do that?'

'Dunno,' Remus said, scratching his stomach idly. 'Something's probably broken.'

'Oh, that's nothing,' James said through another yawn. 'S'just a bit of noise.' And with that astounding bit of medical opinion, he took himself off for a shower.

Sirius gave a yawn, and then a surreptitious sniff in the direction of his armpit. Not smelling anything overly noticeable, he decided that if it was down between a shower and breakfast, the former wasn't nearly as important as the latter. Without looking to see if he was putting on clean clothes or dirty, he began to get dressed. Another of Peter's ground-shaking snores erupted from the bed, and Sirius and Remus both froze. Remus gingerly peered over, did a quick visual exam, and nodded. 'Still alive – think we should wake him?'

Sirius grinned. 'When we could just put his shoes on him, tie the laces together, and slam the door on our way out instead? Where's the fun?'

'This early in the morning?' Remus asked sceptically. 'Don't you think that's a bit-'

'Kind? I see your point– where're the dungbombs?'

'In the trunk, bottom right corner,' James replied, bursting back into the room, his hair standing up in glistening wet spikes, water pooling as he hiked across the floor. 'What you want them for?'

Busy at the foot of Peter's bed, Sirius gave the short-hand version. 'Pete – shoes – explosion.'

'Aahhh,' James nodded in understanding, scratching vigorously at his chin. 'Brilliant.'

'Here we are,' Remus said, dropping a foul-smelling globe into Sirius's waiting hand.

James paused in buttoning his shirt to give the explosive a closer look. 'That one looks a bit dodgy - it's definitely a funny colour –' he began, but Sirius was already unwinding the fuse.

'Right, hold this Moony,' Sirius was instructing. 'It's plenty long – we can make it to the door –'

'Seriously Pads – I think it's gone off,' James said more urgently, stepping forward to point to a great festering dark spot on the bottom of the pustulating ball.

'Okay, get your stuff together, we've got about two minutes,' Sirius informed them, reaching for his jumper as Peter gave another enormous snore. And then the world exploded. At least, it felt that way. In reality, it was only the dungbomb attached to Peter's feet. But, like the yoghurt left lurking in the back of the fridge well past it's sell by date, the explosive had softened and ripened and eventually grown its own form of life…which was now dripping off of the three boys standing half-dressed in the centre of the room.

Poor Peter woke with an unfortunately literal bang, and the first thing he saw was a wall of gooey, dripping figures leaning over the foot of his bed, arms outstretched, faces obscured by green-brown slime. It didn't take long for nature to assert itself. With a scream that had windows and water glasses the tower over shattering, he levitated off the bed, howling, 'Aaaaaaahhhhh! Zombies!', his legs a spinning blur as he dashed for the door.

'Pete!' James shouted after him, but the only answer he got was a rapidly cut off yelp followed by the sound of something large tumbling down the stairs.

Remus swiped things he'd rather not think about away from his eyes and looked at Sirius. 'Had we tied his shoes on yet?'

Sirius listened for a moment as the rumbling, thundering sound of a body rolling down stone risers morphed into the sound of feet rhythmically hitting the floor. 'Yes, but we hadn't done them very tight.'

'Ah,' Remus nodded. And then: 'It's going to be one of those days, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Sirius and James sighed. 'Yes, it is.'

*.*.*

Ze missed breakfast. So did Lily, Serena and Dorcas. And they very nearly missed their first class of the day, too, because Serena got feisty with the hot water pipes and had to be calmed down. When they skidded into the classroom just at the bell, they received a sharp glance and a reminder that punctuality was a virtue before they were allowed to take their seats. From across the room Sirius cocked a brow at Ze. Rolling her eyes heavenward in explanation, she slipped into the seat directly beside him and hissed. 'Did we miss anything at breakfast?'

'Someone's sending Rob love-letters,' he whispered back moments later. 'And food.'

She snorted softly and muttered, 'She wasn't kidding about the plural.'

Sirius's eyes cut sideways in surprise. 'What do you know that I don't?'

'That answer could take days.' Ze's nose twitched. 'And why do you smell like an overflowed loo?'

*.*.*

Ze didn't see Lily again until lunch, and that was only for the thirty seconds it took Lily to pile a sandwich into a napkin. 'I've been doing research,' the head girl informed her quietly, glancing around to see if anyone was listening. 'We'll be clear at nine o'clock for exit.'

'Nine?' Ze repeated, clearing her throat. 'That's moonrise, isn't it?'

'Yeah, but we should be well in place by the time it's above the mountains. Can you pass it on to Dorcas and Serena?' Lily asked, shoving her lunch into her bag.

'Sure,' Ze nodded, cramming the rest of her lunch into her mouth; she had planned to wait for the guys, but they were nowhere to be seen anyway. 'I'll go find them now.'

'Good. Oh, and Ze?"

Ze glanced up from wrestling her bag out from underneath the table. 'Yeah?'

'You have one week to decide what to do about Sirius,' Lily said with a bright, cheerful smile.

'Wha – but –'

'One week, or I'm doing something for you.' The smile turned decidedly smug. 'And trust me when I say it'll be something he'll never forget.'

Ze was still gaping soundlessly when Lily sashayed out the doors. Because that had sounded like a promise, and promises were something Lily always kept.

Bugger.

*.*.*

Ze did remember to find Dorcas and Serena to pass on the mission start time – but she forgot just about everything else. Her homework for Transfiguration, everything she'd ever known about Defence Against the Dark Arts… oh, and her wand. Too busy worrying about what Lily would do to – for? – Sirius in Ze's name, Ze left her wand in the Charms classroom and had to do without it through the last lecture of the day. Thankfully it was only Binns, but it did mean that she had to trudge down three flights of stairs under the groggy spell of History of Magic. Professor Flitwick returned it, but insisted on having a quick word about the deathly dangers of leaving your wand out for anyone to find. Too preoccupied with getting together supplies for her evening outing and contemplating leaving the country before next Tuesday, Ze nodded at every pause and escaped as quickly as she could.

She was just turning out of the Charms classroom when she saw a familiar head of curling brown hair and felt the bottom of her stomach drop completely out. Colin Cross. Just what she needed. She had ducked behind a statue without pausing to think, and found herself peering around a dumpy marble magus to see if she had been spotted. Judging by the broomstick and practise kit, Cross was on his way to Hufflepuff quidditch training. And, given that he was walking, not running, in the opposite direction, he probably hadn't seen her. Which was a good thing…right? You humiliated him and let him run off without explaining why, her common sense said. How does any part of that qualify as a "good thing"? And that little thought was the main reason her mouth opened itself and said, 'Oi! Colin!' before she could stop it. She was already out from behind the statue by the time he turned, and his head twisted just far enough to catch sight of her before whipping back forward, his pace increasing dramatically. You're really getting your practise chasing down people who used to like talking to you, that snide little voice sniggered. Bugger off, was the only response it got, because Ze was calling, 'Colin!' again and speeding up her own footsteps.

He turned the third time she called his name, and she was so close behind him at that point that it was all she could do not to collide with him. All she could think was that at least he paid her more attention than Clive. 'Look,' he was saying, 'about what happened –'

'I'm sorry,' Ze blurted out. He was close enough that she could see his eyes widen at the interruption, but she ploughed on anyway. 'I'm sorry for interrupting of course, but mostly I'm sorry about what happened. In the village – with the – well, with the thing. I wanted to say I'm sorry,' she repeated, aware that this was possibly the most awkward conversation she'd ever had – which, given the last few weeks, was really saying something.

'It wasn't your fault,' he said stiffly, and she could see his ears turning red as he shifted his grip on his broomstick nervously.

'I know that it doesn't make any sense, but yeah, it sort of was,' Ze admitted hastily. 'But the point is – the point is I understand. And if you don't ever want to talk to me again, I understand that too, and all you have to do is say so and I'll walk away and you'll walk away and we'll see one another on the pitch.' Ze stopped, thinking that was going to be it, but her mouth kept right on talking. 'It's just that - look, you and I got on really well before, right? And you're a lovely guy and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I think we can safely say that, at this point, neither one of us is really interested in – well, in getting together or anything. So can I just say I'm sorry, and that I think you're really cool and that maybe, at some point in the future, if you really need to talk about the rugby or something…we could be friends?'

'Friends?' he repeated, sounding faintly dazed.

Ze, who was busy debating the benefits of sewing her own lips shut, nodded. 'Yes…or we could do that whole walking away thing I mentioned. Really, your choice.' Don't mention frogs. Don't mention frogs.

'Yeah, er….friends?'

No wonder he's in Hufflepuff, the Grace-esque corner of her brain said scathingly. 'You don't have to decide now,' Ze said quickly, knowing that this conversation needed to end before she had some sort of nervous fit. 'I just wanted to say thanks for inviting me out, and I'm sorry about how things ended.'

'I was really embarrassed,' he said suddenly, unable to look her in the eye. 'And having Sirius Black show up didn't help.'

Story of my life, she thought wryly. 'I'm sorr-'

'Stop apologising, okay?' he snapped, then softened his tone to add, 'It wasn't anyone's fault. But like you said, it's pretty obvious we aren't really going to work out.'

Despite the fact that she hadn't really expected him to just forget about it, Ze did feel slightly pained. 'Right,' she said slowly. 'So that's the decision then. Um…guess I'll see you around,' she added, turning to retreat, feeling unexpectedly sad.

She was halfway through her about-face when he said, 'Yeah, in Herbology. Same table?'

There was a moment of confusion, and then she turned back to find him smiling - not the quick, dimpled grin she was used to, but a smaller, slightly more tentative version. I like you, she thought. What a pity you taste like a frog. And then there was a mental image of Sirius smiling shyly from behind his hair, and she realised that it wasn't a pity at all. 'Same table,' she replied, beginning to smile in turn. 'But you can't let anything bite me this time.'

'That was your fault,' he jibed back.

'It usually is,' she grinned. 'And that's just part of my charm. Try not to fall off your broom out there,' she added with a nod toward the quidditch pitch.

'And you try to keep your knickers on for once,' he called back, already heading for the courtyard.

Ze laughed and gave him a friendly wave, walking backwards a few steps as she did so. Unexpected as the little encounter had been, she was glad she'd gotten through it now rather than later. It would only have got more awkward as time passed, and this had hardly been fun a mere three days after the incident. But the banter felt right – he was that sort of guy – and she was oddly relieved that he'd decided to make friends instead of ignoring her. And it did feel like friends…which meant she was as romantically rid of Colin Cross as Sirius was of Grace. Grinning widely – hopefully - nervously, Ze spun on her heel and –

Promptly had a small heart attack. 'Sweet Circe of St Ives!' she practically shouted, clutching her chest. 'Where the bloody hell did you come from?'

'Hufflepuff,' the two girls chorused, and dragged Ze around the corner before she could protest.

*.

'Riya and Ellie…right?' Ze asked tentatively, looking back and forth between the two faces. Ellie she was fairly certain she recognised from meals, but Riya she'd only met briefly – and over a crate of dustmops in the dark. They were, she realised now, both quite pretty…and just a wee bit scary. Riya had thick black hair that fell in carefully untamed waves over her shoulders, framing both an exotic face and an enormous pair of gold hoop ear-rings. Ellie's blondish locks were pulled tightly back, and to the standard decorative hoops she had added several thick coats of black eye-liner. Despite the fact that both girls wore the requisite school uniform, there was an overpowering sense of Tracksuit. 'Zeke and Allister's…friends?'

'Girlfriends,' Riya confirmed, shaking her dark hair back off her face. 'You're not dating Colin Cross, are you?' she added, giving Ze a shrewd once-over. 'Only I thought you were shagging –'

'I am not dating Colin or shagging Sirius,' Ze sighed. Yet, the naughty bit of her added with a lascivious chuckle. Just give me time… 'Shut up,' Ze hissed.

'What?' Ellie asked, shooting a confused look at Riya. 'We didn't –'

'Sorry, lots of voices up here, only so many muzzles,' Ze laughed hollowly, tapping the side of her head. 'Joking,' she added when the two younger girls exchanged a worried glance, and them mumbled, 'Sort of,' under her breath for honesty's sake. 'But what're you stalking me for?'

This had two pairs of eyes narrowing dangerously as all thoughts of madness faded. 'We want to help,' Riya informed Ze, crossing her arms over her chest.

'Help with…' Ze prompted when the statement wasn't finished by Tweedledum.

'With giving Grace Harper exactly what she deserves,' Ellie clarified, her own arms folding belligerently.

'Are either one of you related to Dorcas Andrews? No? Wow. Anyway,' Ze continued hurriedly, aware that she was really glad she wasn't called Grace Harper. 'So Allister and Zeke have talked with you – explained…' she trailed off, well aware that she was somewhere past the DANGER! sign and trotting merrily toward the electric fence. 'Stuff?'

'If by "stuff" you mean that they were in some stupid bet –'

'And lost out because they snogged us –'

'And had to do something really stupid –'

'Because they're boys –'

'Then yes.'Ze, her ears ringing from the final chorus, gave her head a clearing shake. 'Okay, so that's you caught up. Good. And…what is it you want to do?'

'Get revenge.'

'On Grace.'

Ahhh – which mouth is moving? They couldn't look more different, but they're bloody indistinguishable when they talk! Hoping she didn't look like she'd recently escaped a padded cell, Ze focussed in on Riya, who she thought might always be the one to speak first. 'Not that I don't think this is a good idea, but why're you talking to me about it?' she asked slowly.

'Well we thought you might be the best person.'

'Since Grace hates you and you probably hate her.'

'And Zeke mentioned –'

'Allister too –'

'Okay stop – one of you has to talk at the time. Full sentences please, and maintain eye contact because I feel a bleeding tennis ball,' Ze begged.

'What's a tennis ball?' Ellie asked.

'I'll explain later,' Riya promised, turning back to Ze. 'Look, the point is, you seem to be the person who knows the most about all this – and, since you're not part of their stupid bet you can actually talk about it to us, yeah?'

'Er…sure?'

'Good,' Riya said. 'Because we need details. And then we need a plan. And then we're going to make her pay.'

'Er, you do know that Grace hasn't actually done anything, as such, right?' Ze pointed out.

'She's threatening to make our boyfriends look stupid,' Ellie snapped, gold hoops swinging in her ears with the side-to-side motions of her head. 'She's made her move – now we're making ours.'

And what does that make me, Mata Hari? Ze wondered plaintively. 'Okay, well…position noted?' she suggested. 'Because I'm going to be honest with you – I haven't got a plan. In fact, I haven't really got much to go on other than a strong personal belief that Grace is a complete bitch and I don't like the way she treats my friends.'

Riya and Ellie exchanged a glance that was full of all sorts of silent communication. 'Would you be willing to help?' Riya finally asked.

'If we came up with the plan,' Ellie added.

'Ah, well, if I thought she deserved it, yeah,' Ze said after a moment's thought. 'Nothing involving blood or permanent transfiguration though,' she added hastily, deciding that these rules had to be made up front before anyone got over-excited with the thumbscrews.

'Right,' they nodded together. 'We'll get back to you then,' Riya continued, 'once we've come up with something.'

'And let us know if you have any ideas of your own,' were Ellie's parting words as the two girls backed toward the main corridor.

They plot revenge and then flee, and they're wearing faux fur – what is this, East Enders? But another – more important – question was hovering on the tip of Ze's tongue. 'Aren't you angry?' she blurted out. 'At Zeke and Allister, I mean,' she elaborated when they turned back. 'For not telling you about the bet and then asking you out?'

Riya and Ellie exchanged yet another look, this one crammed with surprise and something like pity. 'They're blokes,' Riya shrugged, as though this explained all. 'They do stupid things – that's part of the deal.'

'No one's perfect,' Ellie agreed.

'Oh,' Ze said – but to herself, because her would-be…wait, what would they be, at this point? Co-conspirators? Co-co-conspirators? Partners in intention-to-commit-a-crime? Well, whatever they were, they were gone, leaving Ze with a raging headache and a deep respect for Machiavelli.

*.*.*.*.*Sirius had never really thought of doing Astronomy homework as a productive exercise, but today he was – pardon the pun – thanking his lucky stars he'd been bored enough to try. Because, somehow, between Ze and secret plots and potential ex-girlfriend disasters and watching Rob eat an entire roast chicken at lunch, they had forgotten. Not just Sirius, but all of them – all of the Marauders. Well, Remus probably hadn't forgotten, but that would be because he was the one about to turn into a great, hairy slathering monster. It was Sirius's fault, and he knew it. James and Peter had left the dormitory the morning before without hearing Sirius and Remus's conversation. And then, of course, after everything that had happened during the day yesterday, Sirius had forgotten his and Remus's conversation. And then they'd all gone to bed, and then they'd tied Pete's shoes together, and then they'd had to de-dung, and no one had even thought about it. Well, again, except Remus – who was too much of a gentleman to ever bring it up himself. But the point was, they had no Plan. Their best mate was about to transform into a werewolf, and they hadn't even arranged for a bowl of water and some fresh newspapers to shred.

Which was why Sirius was charging through the castle, looking for Peter and James. They had a lot of catching up to do – and they were going to have to do it now. Shouting the password to the Fat Lady, Sirius dove through the portrait hole and put his combat roll to good use, bouncing to his feet and turning a full circle in the centre of the Gryffindor common room. Which proved to be have been a useless abuse of his rotator cuff because it appeared that everyone else was being good and going to class. Although his luck could have been worse: he could have run into Remus. And that would be bad – very bad, because Moony didn't just intrinsically sense shortcomings, he employed the deadliest force on earth: The Half Blink. It was like a McGonagall Eyebrow and a Dumbledore No-Sweeties-For-You Lip-Purse combined. And he only ever unleashed it when his best mates had done something horribly, unforgivably stupid. Like setting themselves on fire. It was worse than being Chastised. It was even more horrible than being Interrogated. It was that slow, resigned half-closure of lids over tired blue eyes that told you, with more sting than any verbal rebuke, that Remus was Disappointed.

Sirius was just beginning to have pre-experience shock tremors when he heard the portrait slam shut, and he turned in time to see James, moving with the gait of the mentally abstracted toward the staircase. Leaping over a table and two chairs, Sirius waved furiously at his friend, but received no response. One look at James's face told him that "keen observation" was currently filed under Wishful Thinking. And, since there wasn't time for a sweep, let alone a full-office tidy, he decided to bypass Subtle Banter and go straight on to Stating the Obvious. James turned distractedly when his shoulder was tapped, just in time to catch Sirius whispering, 'The chicken prowls at midnight!'

It took a split second for James to catch on, and then his eyes were bugging out with guilt, remorse, and rapid cogitation. 'The penguin is in the Eleventh House?' he demanded breathlessly. Sirius arched one brow and suavely thumbed his nose. 'Shit,' James hissed. 'Worst friends ever. Come on –'

And with that, they were dashing up the stairs. 'We haven't got time to Plan,' Sirius was saying desperately. 'We've done no research, no reconnaissance, no –'

'No strategising,' Remus said lightly from his bed as the door to their dormitory swung closed behind a stunned Sirius and James. 'Funny thing about spiral stairs,' he informed his two friends with a small, tired smile, 'they echo.'

For a moment Sirius and James stood, poised for the inevitable Look, only to watch as Remus settled back against his pillow, his eyes drifting closed. 'Look Moony, we are really, really sorry,' James began.

'So sorry – complete knobheads - worst friends in the world,' Sirius continued, only to be interrupted by a raspy laugh.

'You sound like a pair of girls,' the young werewolf chuckled, his eyes still closed. 'So you've had things to do and haven't had time to plan our monthly tea,' he added with a faint shrug that said "who cares?" 'You'll be there tonight to make sure I don't go biting anything?'

'Well…yeah,' James said slowly.

'Where else would we be?' Sirius asked.

'Mmm,' Remus murmured, barely awake and still managing to sound amused. 'Better have a nap then – you need your beauty sleep.'

James and Sirius exchanged a glance: this was the first time in their years at school that they'd forgotten Remus's furry little problem, and he wasn't even angry? He'd tell them off for setting their own heads on fire, but didn't bat an eye when they all but forgot his existence? 'Think he's going for sainthood?' James mouthed at Sirius.

Sirius looked over at Remus, hollow-cheeked and greyish, half-shrouded in sheets, and shook his head slowly. Remus was Remus, doing what needed to be done and trusting that his friends would have the sense to do the same. He didn't need sainthood – all that palm-waving and sitting for portraits was just for the guys who couldn't pull on their own. 'I think he's going for a nap,' Sirius replied at last.

'Yeah, well, same thing in the end,' James yawned, and collapsed onto his bed.

'Very true,' Sirius chuckled, settling back into his own pillows. 'Very true.'

*.*.*.*.*

Lessons were well over but food wasn't yet being served, so Ze knew that her best chance of catching Sirius was the common room. On her walk up from the Hufflepuff Hustle (as she'd privately dubbed her conversation with Riya and Ellie), she'd decided she might as well enjoy his company for the next week, because after that she would be living under a rock somewhere, wearing a wig and answering to a different name. Groaning slightly as she clambered through the portrait hole, she did a quick scan of the room but spotted no Sirius – in fact, the presence of seventh year males was notably lacking. And really, she supposed she could tell any of them that the girlfriend issue was sorted. Well, except Clive. But somehow she felt that Sirius had a right to know first – after all, the target of all this violent vengeance was his ex-girlfriend. The fact that the angels of destruction were Allister and Zeke's current girlfriends just made it even more interesting. But Ze had had just about enough of interesting – it was somebody else's turn.

'Hey Rob, you seen Sirius or James?' she called to the redheaded boy who was sitting by the fire, fingering a much-folded piece of parchment.

'Hmmm?' was the uncharacteristically quiet response, 'Oh, yeah, upstairs mate,' he added, not bothering to turn around.

'Cheers,' Ze replied, grinning as she spotted the distinctive "R" scrawled on the outside of the letter. Chuckling as she mounted the stairs – honestly, she'd take Dorcas as Lady Miranda over Dorcas as Lucrezia Borgia any day – she tapped her way up to the boys' seventh. After a cursory knock she popped her head into the room, expecting to see dishevelled figures sprawled on unmade beds, and was struck dumb by the sight that greeted her.

The sight of the most infamous trouble-makers in Hogwarts' history napping innocently in their beds was bizarre enough to warrant closer inspection. The fact that they also happened to be three of the most attractive students in Hogwarts' history didn't hurt either, but, Ze thought with a smirk, she could keep that bit to herself. In a way though she almost wished someone was witnessing this with her – Lily, perhaps, given the way James was curled on his side, sweetly cuddling his pillow, his glasses begging to be removed and folded on his bedside table. He looked all of six, his entire face relaxed, mouth slightly open as he issued a light, breathy snore. Remus was his polar opposite, haggard and exhausted, slumped against his pillows like a half-melted wax doll, his sandy lashes standing out against the dark shadows beneath his eyes. And then there was Sirius.

Ze snuck a few steps closer to the end of his bed, staring down at the careless sprawl of limbs. He didn't look quite real with his face so relaxed and innocent, his hair mussed from the pillow. Looking at him now, you would never guess this beautiful, angelic being was capable of turning the world on end just for fun. Thinking of Sirius mid-prank brought a faint smile to Ze's lips; beautiful as he was sleeping, she preferred him awake and wreaking havoc – he looked so much happier then. Now, his brows puckering faintly at something in his dreams, he seemed vaguely worried, shifting slightly, a shiver running across his skin. It wasn't surprising that he was cold - he hadn't pulled the sheets up, hadn't even bothered to take off his shoes. He was just sprawled there, tie off and shirt un-tucked, gorgeous and touchable and in need of a little warmth, and Ze felt herself making a decision…

*.*.*Sirius started awake when the weight slid up his body, warm and slight and pliant. He was pushing himself up onto his elbows when the finger skimmed across his lips, warning him to be quiet, and Ze grinned at him from barely a breath away. Her hand was already skating across his cheek, skimming into his hair and around to trace his ear, and he stopped breathing about the time she whispered, 'You looked like you needed a blanket,' and kissed him.

There wasn't really any talking after that. Which was fine with Sirius – not that he wouldn't have liked to thank whichever deities had arranged this, but he rather thought it could wait. She tasted like he'd thought she would, only better, and when she sank down against him he was fairly sure he'd discovered how he wanted to die. He could smell her all around him, like Christmas only better, and when he nibbled at her lower lip she groaned into him just like he'd hoped she would. Her hands were sliding down, followed by her mouth, and slender fingers were making rapid work of buttons. Cool hands skimmed his chest and down his stomach and he shuddered; she had a sweet spot just behind her ear and he could feel her breathing hard against him and - dear gods, he didn't know where she'd learned to do that, but he hoped she didn't forget it any time soon –

'Ze,' he panted, 'are you sure?' His only answer was the shiver of breath against his face before she kissed him again and it definitely felt like a yes. His hands were skating up her back, gathering her shirt and pulling, and she was helping, the whole thing sliding up and she pulled back just long enough for it to come off and her skin was the softest thing he had ever touched, velvety and warm and smooth as a –

cotton sheet?

Sirius's eyes snapped open, heart pounding, clutching the bedclothes to his chest, madly snogging the air. His first thought was Ze-sex-good and his second thought was So un-fucking-fair. Because it was late afternoon, the light just beginning to die out of the windows, and he was sprawled in his bed, alone, ready to explode. The worst part was definitely the "alone". With a frustrated groan he shifted, and was startled to realise that he really was draped in his duvet and sheets – because he didn't remember pulling them up over himself. Not that it really mattered. What mattered was that he kept having these dreams – and this one had been the most vivid yet – that were getting horribly out of control. He could taste her and smell her and –

In the bed beside him James jerked awake, sitting straight up with a ringing cry of, 'Dragons!' before peering around myopically, his glasses dangling from one ear.

And nothing killed the mood like your best mate shouting "Dragons!" at the top of his voice. 'Sharp pointy teeth,' Sirius muttered by way of greeting, shuffling into a sitting position himself. Looking down, he saw his shoes beside his bed, placed very neatly side-by-side, as though someone had set them down with utmost care. He didn't know precisely how long he stared at those two black lace-ups, lying innocuously on the floor, but it was long enough for the blood to flow back up to his brain. A thought began to tickle the back of his head, and as he listened to James sort out his glasses and yawn his way to the toilet, Sirius sat very, very still and contemplated two things:

The first was that this marked the only occasion where Ze had actually spoken to him in the dream. …and here he was with a blanket pulled over him, just like she'd said. And then there was the fact that he really could smell her – like Christmas, only better – hanging in the air. Which meant –

Like a shot, he was out of his bed and sliding across the floor to the wager tacked on the wall, fervently hoping his name had just turned red.

*.*.*.*.*

'Believe me, trying to find your knickers in the dark is not worth the time,' Serena informed Dorcas with easy authority. 'Better to just not wear any.'

'But what about the draft?' Dorcas queried, eyeing Serena's be-robed form with decidedly sceptical eyes.

'After ten minutes you'll hardly notice it,' was the breezy reply.

'Yeah, 'cos you'll be numb,' Lily muttered, earning a snigger from Ze.

'They're called trousers,' Ze chuckled, doing up her rucksack and slinging it over her shoulder. 'You should invest sometime.' A quick glance around the room showed four bags full of Merlin-knew-what, several pairs of mittens, and an eclectic group of girls with nothing more in common than ownership of Wellington boots…and Serena's had flowers on, so they didn't technically count. 'I think we're ready,' Ze said slowly, a wide smile stretching across her face.

'I know we are,' Serena agreed, eyes glittering with mischief.

Dorcas looked up, adjusting the fit of her own bag and then the bridge of her glasses. 'So now we're sneaking out?'

There was a snap as Lily clipped her wand into place. 'Please,' she sneered. 'Sneaking is for boys.'

A/N:

first edit...we'll see how we go. to give credit where credit is due (and, of course, avoid copyright infringement), the quote in the chapter graphic hails from John Crowe Ransom's 'The Equilibrists'.

thanks so much to all who read the chapter the first time around and found the many, many mistakes - some of them have been corrected, others i'm still working out how to fix.

and as always, thanks so much to everyone who has read and reviewed - thoughts, opinions, favourite quotes - they're what make writing this worthwhile!


	33. Life is Like a Box of Chocolates

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 33: Life Is Like A Box of Chocolates

The Hogwarts clock struck half past eight.

'Pete does know, doesn't he? That we're supposed to be out there already?' James mumbled to Sirius, trying to look casual. Unfortunately, there is nothing casual about standing in the dark, inspecting the moss creeping up a castle wall…which was possibly why Mrs Norris was glaring at him in a way that said "it's the dungeons for you, just as soon as I've finished washing my whiskers."

'Yeah, he knows,' Sirius replied, doing a much better job of nonchalantly doing nothing. 'Said he had an essay to finish – he'd meet us here after the library.'

'Ye gods, the library,' James shuddered. 'Gives me hives just thinking about it.'

'Please, the only reason you go into the library is to spy on Evans, and it isn't hives you get from that,' Sirius said, too preoccupied to properly sneer.

James had the grace to blush, but grinned through it, saying, 'Yeah, but it's worth it…' in a dreamy tone.

Sirius, who was stewing in a massive vat labelled Disappointment, barely hear his friend. He still hadn't got over the shock of finding that his name was written in black ink on the wager form. He just couldn't believe it – it had felt so real. Normally he counted that as a plus in dreams – given the sort of dreams he'd been having lately – but right now he was feeling positively bitter. He could have sworn – on his name, his life, what little honour he could lay claim to – that Ze had been in the room just before he'd woken up. For Circe's sake, he had still been able to smell her. Not that he had mentioned any of this to his friends – there were dreams, and then there was dementia, and even Sirius was beginning to wonder which side of the fence he was currently standing on.

Remus hadn't been in any condition to talk anyway, and James had still been muttering about scaly bastards with wings. Peter had turned up at the usual dinner hour, just in time to discover that it was full moon and consequently feel like an arse. Remus had already departed for the matron's office, eyes glassy and face grey, and the other three had made their way down to dinner without talking much. James had salivated over Lily and Sirius had scanned the room for Ze – when she'd failed to make an appearance an hour into the meal, he'd got up the courage to ask Lily where she was.

Lily, her eyes dancing mischievously, had told him Ze had left the dormitory just before supper on an errand, but that she had mentioned wanting to have a chat with Sirius – about something important. Since Lily was wearing that funny expression girls got when they were telling you something without actually saying it, Sirius had done his best to look clever and mysterious. Somehow, he didn't think it had worked. Lily had just patted him on the hand and sent him back to his seat with instructions to be a good boy, it would all work out in the end.

Now, stood in the doorway to the courtyard, glowering blackly at his own feet, he had half a mind to hunt Lily down and demand an explanation. He might have done it, too, if there had been a prayer in hell of it working. But, thankfully, some small shred of self-preservation remembered dangling perilously over the edge of a staircase whilst Lily shouted, and Sirius had decided to settle for inactive brooding over certain death. This train of thought was, luckily, interrupted by Peter stampeding breathlessly into the courtyard and gasping, 'Have I missed it?'

'I don't know,' Sirius asked sarcastically, 'which point are we talking about?'

Peter looked momentarily confused, and James shook his head, stepping forward to pat the shorter boy on the shoulder. 'Don't mind him, his knickers are twisted around something important. But we are late – come on.' And with that, he tipped his head at the small alcove just behind the stairs and disappeared into the shadows there.

Peter, looking furtively over his shoulder, followed. A moment later there were two sighs of annoyance, and a disembodied voice that managed to roll its eyes and tap its foot said, 'Quit brooding and get under here – we haven't got all night.' And then Sirius Black disappeared, and the courtyard was empty of everything except shadows.

Mrs Norris gave the slow blink of feline omniscience, decided there were some things Mr Filch just didn't need to know, and finished washing her whiskers.

*.*.*

'D'you think this is white, or ecru?''….and the difference is?'

Lily heaved a sigh. 'Stop worrying about what colour your shift is and help us find the sacred armbands.'

'You mean the sacred bits of foil?' Ze sniggered, turning away from Serena's colour quandary and crouching to help Lily rummage through her rucksack.

'It took me thirty seven chocolate frog wrappers to make those,' Dorcas said indignantly.

'I know, I helped empty them,' was Ze's solemn reply. And, she added privately to herself, it was probably the only useful thing I've accomplished in the last twenty four hours. Not that she hadn't wanted to help, of course – it was just that the others seemed to have so much more in the way of supplies. When the need for white shifts arose, Serena had graciously volunteered her wide selection of boudoir attire, telling them to choose whatever they liked best. Dorcas had selflessly sacrificed her store of sweets, and Lily had provided roughly two doctoral theses' worth of research, which she modestly referred to as "homework". As best Ze could tell, her main contribution had been her bottomless appetite and a dab hand with the glue.

'Er, guys?' Serena said hesitantly from the direction of her own rucksack. 'I think the Diadem of Chastity's got a bit…crushed.'

'The Diadem of Chastity?' Lily repeated, standing. 'I thought we'd decided on the Headdress of Womanly Wisdom?'

'Yeah, but we didn't have enough toilet roll, remember? Anyway,' Serena continued, flipping open a book and pointing to an illustration. 'Would you want to be wearing that on your head all night?'

Lily bent forward to peruse the drawing, considered the weight-to-space ratio, and grimaced. 'Right, Diadem of Chastity it is.' With a few shakes and a cringe-inducing twangggg, she worked the noble construction back into its intended shape. 'Who's wearing it then?'

There was a prodigious shuffling of feet as everyone found somewhere else to look. 'I'm not really, er, qualified,' Serena pointed out at length. 'So it'll have to be one of you….'

In the end, it was Dorcas who donned the Diadem of Chastity – the presence of the ubiquitous lavender bow kept it from sliding off her head, which was more than Lily or Ze could accomplish. Serena carried the Horn of Plenty, and Lily was charged with the Huntress's Knife. Ze had the dubious honour of wearing the Garter of Virtue, which was really just a crude circle of leafy oak twigs she had to shove up her thigh. After the third Acorn Assault it was agreed that she could take it off as soon as the incantations had been spoken. After adorning themselves with the Halos of Purity (more oak leaves, this time wrapped around the temples…) and the sacred armbands, they did a final check to prevent wardrobe malfunctions and declared themselves ready.

Anyone else would have declared them barking mad. After all, they were a group of four girls wearing nightdresses tarted up with chocolate wrappers and deciduous greenery. All the wishing in the world couldn't turn Serena's Horn of Plenty into anything other than a roll of newspaper stuffed with sweets and left-over sandwiches, and no amount of glamour could make Lily's Someone in London Loves You! souvenir letter-opener the Huntress's Knife. But the point was that no one else was around. Under the cover of darkness (alright, and from about a mile away) they did indeed look like mistresses of the pagan mysteries, called forth by elemental powers to dance in the light of the moon.

(Perhaps with the tagline: Wardrobe and Make-up by Serena.)

The chosen site for the ritual was a circle of standing stones, either the work of actual druids or mischievous school children (or both), on the edge of the Hogwarts grounds. Ze had been prepared for subversion – or in the least low-level trickery – in escaping the castle, but Lily had strode through the corridors as if she owned them, the other three trailing in her wake. No one had questioned their passing, or even their leaving the castle, and Ze was curious to see if this technique would work just well when it came to going back in. Now, however, she was mostly worried about taking a chill – Scotland, even in October, was not for the faint of circulation.

'We need to make sure the circle is clear of all unnatural objects,' Serena was saying, tilting her book open to read by the light of her wand. 'So all the bags, shoes…'

'Do you think the armbands count?' Dorcas asked, peering at her upper arm shrewdly. 'Chocolate frogs aren't precisely "natural" –'

'I think it just means anything not needed for the, er, ceremony,' Lily pointed out, depositing her rucksack, robes and shoes just outside the nearest stone. Ze, shivering as she toed out of her own shoes, wondered why she hadn't thought of bringing along a drink.

'I didn't know we were using the Staff of Enlightenment,' she heard Serena say, and looked up in time to see Dorcas clutching a sturdy wooden cudgel to her breast.

'It isn't the Staff of Enlightenment – it's the Staff of Warding Off Unexpected Wildlife.'

Everyone looked nervously at the trees. 'Er, probably that should stay inside too, then.'

'So are we ready?'

'Yes-'

'Hang on – just a second.' Serena rummaged in her bag, the only one still inside the circle, and produced a rather sizeable flask, which she offered to Lily. 'Go on,' she prompted, shaking it when the redhead just stared. 'Have a tipple – we're going to need it.'

Lily's brows arched faintly, but Ze was stepping in before comment could be made. 'That'll warm us up a treat,' she said thankfully, taking the flask and unscrewing the top, pouring out a cup-full of the steaming liquid and grinning when the fumes burned her eyes. 'Cheers Serena – wish I'd thought of it.'

When Ze merely coughed, but didn't keel over dead, Lily and Dorcas seemed to take heart. 'What is it?' the be-spectacled girl asked.

'Coffee,' Serena said, at the same moment Ze replied, 'Whisky.'

'Well, same thing in the end,' Ze shrugged, finishing off her cup and passing it to Dorcas. 'At least I can feel my toes now.'

'And it's sanitary,' Dorcas agreed, pouring a healthy dose and sipping daintily. 'Bacteria killed on contact.'

'I do love a sound, well-parsed argument,' Lily sighed happily, accepting the flask. 'Mmm,' she added a moment later, licking her lips. 'That's lovely.'

'Oh, well, in that case the rest of the bottle's in my bag….'

They had only meant to warm themselves up a bit before getting on with the business at hand, but somehow the flask kept circling, and soon they found themselves sitting on a hastily conjured blanket, having a chat. Serena had started up the bonfire and soon Dorcas was heating more coffee as they all listened to Ze relate her peace-making with Colin Cross.

'…so then he just said he'd see me in Herbology. I thought he'd gone completely off me, and in a way I suppose he has, but at least we can be friends now,' she shrugged, finishing off the tale. 'Which is probably for the best, anyway.'

'He really does seem nice,' Serena said contemplatively, picking through the bits of Plenty hanging out of the top of the Horn. 'I wonder if there's anyone who needs a boyfriend…'

'The last time you engineered a set-up, the Astronomy Tower caught on fire and two people were nearly expelled,' Lily reminded her sternly. 'You promised.'

Serena hung her head for a moment, then glanced up from behind the curtain of her hair. 'Maybe just a little hint -'

'No,' Lily said emphatically.

Ze, sensing that this was likely not a subject best explored in the presence of alcohol, turned hastily to Dorcas and said in a loud voice, 'So, how's the Campaign of Vengeance coming? Er, you writing letters to Rob,' she clarified when Dorcas looked confused.

'Oooh,' Dorcas nodded, sipping at her coffee and managing to grin maniacally at the same time. 'Brilliantly. Why? Has he mentioned something?' she asked eagerly.

Ze, who had been congratulating herself of preventing the conflict over blind dates, wasn't quite prepared for this new onslaught. 'Uuuuh,' she stalled cleverly. 'Well…I saw him in the common room tonight, holding your letter,' she said at last. 'He definitely looked…enthralled?'

'Yes!' Dorcas grinned, toasting Ze with her cup and drinking.

'Enthralled?' Serena repeated avidly. 'When you say –'

'I only saw him for a second,' Ze hurried to tell her, not wanting to get any more involved than she already was. 'I just asked him if he'd seen Sirius – or James or Remus,' she tacked on when Lily smirked, 'and he was all, I dunno, distracted. Like he had a load on his mind,' she added, toasting Dorcas in her turn. 'So well done.'

'Excellent,' Dorcas chuckled melodically over the rim of her cup.

'Out of curiosity,' Lily probed, 'what was it you sent him at breakfast this morning – besides the letter, I mean?'

Serena let out a snort, but quickly stifled it to let Dorcas answer. 'Oh, just a little token of my affections,' was the cryptic reply. 'I thought he might enjoy a nice box of chocolates.'

'Chocolates?' Lily and Ze chorused dubiously.

'Mmm….with lovely nougat and flobberworm dung centres. I ordered them specially from Honeyduke's.'

'Nougat and flobberworm dung?'

'I think I'm going to be sick – '

'Dorcas, what if that's poisonous –'

'Oh, it's perfectly harmless,' Dorcas assured Lily blithely. 'Completely non-toxic organic waste materials. Flobberworms' diets are entirely vegetable-based, so he was essentially eating falafel. I checked to be sure, of course – poisoning him at this stage would be positively premature.'

It was a good thing Lily was down several cups of Serena's coffee. 'Do you think he actually ate them?' the redhead asked, fascination coming to the fore now that she had been assured of Rob's relative safety.

It was Ze who answered this. 'Of course he did – this is Rob. I'm guessing you put the letter on the bottom,' she asked, turning to Dorcas, 'knowing he'd eat the food first and do the work later?'

'Of course,' Dorcas beamed. 'I only wish I'd been there to see his face when he realised what he'd just eaten,' she added wistfully.

'Wait – you - you told him?' Lily gaped.

'Well of course I told him,' Dorcas said blankly. 'What would be the point in not telling?'

Serena, whose cheeks were beginning to flush, giggled madly. 'She wrote him "Hope you've enjoyed my little treats - if you expect other people to swallow your shit, you'll need to get used to doing it yourself. Kisses, Madame X."'

Even Ze was revolted at this. 'You mean he thinks it was his own -'

'Well, I left that point up to interpretation,' Dorcas shrugged lightly. 'And really, he ate all those Cockroach Clusters of his own volition, so I don't see how he can object to a bit of flobberworm.'

This statement was greeted by profound silence. And finally Lily said, 'I think I need another drink.'

A half hour later, fortified, warmed and feeling very fine, they took up their positions and looked to Serena for guidance. 'Right,' she said, teetering slightly, 'so we all stand in the four corners like –'

'Corners of what?'

'Oh, just stand like you are – I'm freezing my tits off and we haven't got a slide-rule. Now, bonfire.' She squinted for a moment at the blaze burning merrily in the centre of the circle. 'Check.' She glanced around, eyeing them closely. 'Diadem, knife, horn – garter?' Ze shifted her leg obligingly, grimacing and trying not to think of the potential for chafing. 'Right, check. Now….' she trailed off, running her finger down the page. 'There's all this rubbish about moons and forces in balance and fingers pointing at other people when you're really pointing at yourself….s'load of bollocks, so what do you say we just skip that?'

There was a moment of earnest contemplation, and then the universal decision of: 'Yeah,' followed by a near-collective hiccough.

'Brilliant,' she cleared her throat. 'Right, here goes!' With another chesty a-hem, she embarked on what four girls and several very confused woodland creatures would later regard as the most bizarre ritual ever performed in the Hogwarts druid circle. Which, when you get right down to it, is saying something.

'We are gathered, sisters of the earth, daughters of the moon, guardians of the – blah blah blah –' there was the rustle of a page flipping in the darkness. 'Something something, to do our sacred duty! As the stars command, we arise to exe- Exeter –'

'Hic - Execute!'

' - execute the most ancient and noble ritual of the –' Serena puttered to a halt and peered at the page. 'Here, does Venus look like she's in as-asc – ascension thingy?'

Four heads tipped back to stare at the velvet blanket of the sky. 'Er…dunno…'

'S'bit cloudy.'

'Ah, we looked yesterday – it was then. Keep going!'

'Ri-hic-ght! We know our rights and our duties, and come unto this circle for - for the glory of the –'

'Agh – it's bloody freezing! Can we just get to the part where we dance around naked?'

'But there's got to be moonlight!' was the dismayed reply.

Again four heads tipped back to regard the mysteries of heaven; in response to their silent plea a narrow fissure opened between two clouds, and a meagre beam of moonlight trickled down to earth. Ze swallowed down a belch and squinted. 'Think that counts?'

'Close enough,' came Lily's voice.

Serena, deadly tired of holding up the enormous book of ceremonies, tossed it carelessly over her shoulder and nodded. 'Right, get your kit off.'

There was a great deal of struggling, stumbling, and cursing of decorative lace. The Garter of Virtue met a violent end atop the Bonfire of Guiding Light. And then, as this was the only part of the venture that they had really rehearsed, the four girls joined hands and began their dance. Perhaps out of pity, or amusement, or just because that's what it was made to do, the circle of stones joined the fray, the great verticals stretching toward the sky, casting out appropriately mystical shadows. The moon, sensing that it had completely buggered up its cue, blew through the clouds and made a hasty entrance stage left to beam dramatically down on the scene. It shouldn't have worked – none of the proper words had been spoken, none of the sacred artefacts were in attendance, and the participants were hardly taking things seriously. If life were fair, they would have been booted out of the sacred ranks of the Seekers of Enlightenment for being drunk and disorderly.

But life is not fair, and if the human soul is plagued by a deep and earnest desire to understand the mysteries of the universe, then it is also plagued by a deep and earnest need for a bit of fun once in awhile. Twirling naked beneath the moon may not answer any of the great, burning questions of the heart, but it does take your mind off thinking of them. And it's an act which is generally forbidden, which makes it all the more enticing, and secret – and powerful. Which is probably why everyone, from the seemingly uninhibited to the primmest and most proper, dreams of doing it. Because when you put your clothes back on you've gotten away with something you shouldn't have, an Eve who never got caught pinching the apple…

They had practised three minutes or so of dancing, but the steps didn't last through two. It was that kind of night, where everything runs on fast-forward except your brain, which wasn't invited to the party in any case. There was shrieking, and laughing, and a collective sense of infinity - because there always is on a good night out. It wasn't technically a ritual. They weren't after power or understanding or even boyfriends. They were just four girls, stuck somewhere between innocence and the perilous realms of self-discovery, abandoning reality for a moment to spin endlessly beneath the stars. Because stars, if they judge, are too far away to tell you about it, and the people spinning with you are too close to care. For the moment, they were four bodies churning through space, heads thrown back and eyes closed in complete abandon, utterly unaware of the world outside of themselves.

Which was a pity because, had they gone a little lighter on the complete abandon, or just taken a moment to look to the left, they might have had the pleasure of seeing a stag run head-long into a tree.

*.*.*

'N-n-n-n-naaaaked!'Sirius was too busy worrying about being concussed himself to see if James was in the same predicament. Because really, he had to be hallucinating. How else did he explain being sprawled across the forest floor, half squashed by James Potter, his head full of confused visions of his lady-love?

'N-n-naked! She's naked! Oh, my sweet Lily-Flower!'

And that brought Sirius back down to earth. 'Your sweet Lily-Flower?' he asked, shoving himself into a semi-upright position. 'You really have hit your head.'

But the dazed quality of James's gaze was more in line with an acolyte's adoring idol worship than the drooling lunacy of the cranially battered. 'So beautiful,' he whispered reverently.

Sirius tried – he really did – to keep his gaze averted. But he was seventeen. And male. And, he squeamishly thought, very definitely in like. And possibly suffering head trauma. Running into your best mate, who happens to have antlers, just after he's run into a tree himself, will do that to you. Not that Sirius could claim capital alertness before the collision; his emotions and thoughts might be less complex when he was in canine form, but he was still quite capable of cogitating "NAKED ZE! NAKED ZE!" without any trouble at all. And there she was, thirty metres away, spinning joyously through the night, arms flung out…

James let out an inarticulate gurgle of happiness. 'Will you look at that…' he breathed.

Sirius couldn't think of a pithy way to admit that he was looking, so he just settled for staring open-mouthed. They were far enough away that seeing specifics was just wishful thinking – but they were boys with perfectly sound imaginations and a lot of experience in the "wishful thinking" department, so they really weren't missing out on anything. A secondary cataloguing instinct told him that Serena and Lily and even Dorcas were surprisingly well put together, but mostly he was just gaping at the occasional flash of Ze he could catch between the stones.

And then James was shaking him by the shoulder, shocked and wide-eyed and completely gleeful. 'It worked! It worked Pads, it worked!'

Sirius, whose teeth were beginning to rattle, jerked out of James's grasp and pushed his friend behind the cover of a handy shrub. 'Keep your voice down!' he hissed. 'And what worked?'

'The ritual!' James beamed, peering through the branches of the bush. 'The fertility ritual! Remember? They're in the same place doing the same thing - it worked!'

Sirius slowly turned back to the girls. Could…was it actually – nooo. It couldn't be possible. Could it? Privately, Sirius thought that what Serena was doing looked more like an imitation of an epileptic millipede than a fertility dance, but what did he know? They were in the same spot, dancing naked, around a bonfire…and that thing on Dorcas's head looked decidedly arcane. 'Nostradamus's crystal balls…' he swore wonderingly.

'Oh my lovely Lily,' James was crooning, tugging desperately at the hem of his shirt. 'I'm coming my love –'

'What?!' Sirius hissed, nearly tackling his friend flat in an effort to keep James on the ground and the clothes on James. 'What're you doing?'

'We have to join in!' James cried desperately. 'That's the point! We have to go and dance and –'

'I am not running around naked in front of –'

An eerie howl, some distance away but carrying thinly on the breeze, silenced them both. Wide eyes peered into the darkness, and then two gazes snapped together in terror. 'Moony!'

'Fuck!' Sirius hissed, peering at the stone circle for any hint that the girls had heard the call. But, judging by the fact that they hadn't slowed, much less stopped, he was guessing they hadn't. 'We have to get them out of here!'

'Lily!' James was saying desperately, leaping forward, clearly on his way to rescue his reluctant damsel.

'Don't be an idiot,' Sirius ordered, jerking him, once again, behind the bush. 'We can't go charging up there like this – they'll hex us dead before they even know who it is.'

'But we have to get them back to the castle,' James was saying, equally fervent. 'In case you forgot, a werewolf is coming straight for them!'

'This is the last time we play hide and seek with someone who's contagious,' Sirius muttered, his brain working in top gear. 'Look – here's what we'll do. You go back and head Remus off, try to drive him back toward the Shack. I –'

'I'm not leaving Lily –'

'I'll stay here and chase the girls back up to the castle,' Sirius continued over him.

'I could do that and you could go after Moony,' James began, clearly unwilling to desert the situation.

'And have Diana the Huntress up there thinking you're Actaeon?' Sirius shot back. 'Not a good idea. You're the only one big enough to herd Moony by yourself, and they'll be more scared of a dog than a deer –'

'Stag,' James interrupted snappishly.

'Right,' Sirius said, unwilling to waste any more time arguing. 'Look, this is the best way of doing it – you can be furious at me later, but right now make sure Lily's safe, yeah?'

James glowered for a moment more, and then nodded. 'If you let anything happen to her –'

'They'll be fine - all of them. Marauder's word.'

Which, as James well knew, was only good to another Marauder – and in which case it was sacred. 'Right,' he nodded. 'Try not to get killed.'

'Snap,' Sirius replied with a tight smile. 'I'll give you details of the close-up later,' he added.

James glared once, for show, and then he was a stag, charging through the forest in the direction of the village. Sirius, turning back to the flickering glow of the bonfire, heaved an enormous sigh. He'd always been keen on naked girls…he had just imagined he would be chasing them on two legs, not four.

*.*.*

Inside the stone circle cheeks of all sorts were flushed, and the fire was beginning to settle from Guiding Light into Shaky Signal of Unreliable Direction. Fittingly, the dancers had finally run out of breath, energy, and, one presumed, appropriate moves.

'Really wears you out, parading around starkers,' Lily gasped, her breath steaming in the air as she pulled her borrowed nightdress back over her head and flopping onto the grass. 'I could murder a kebab.'

'All we've got are sandwiches,' Serena said apologetically, tugging her own hem into place and passing the much-abused Horn of Plenty. 'The ones on the bottom are still pretty decent though.'

Ze, flushed with her exertions, sorted out her straps and tumbled onto the damp grass herself to pick through the selection, hoping for something without relish. 'This,' she pronounced as she tore the wrapper from her snack, 'is brilliant.'

'I know,' Serena agreed. 'Who needs the gobstones club?'

'You're in the gobstones club?' a confounded Dorcas asked. 'Even I'm not in the gobstones club.'

'I'm not either,' Serena was hasty to assure her. 'It was just, er, a figure of speech.'

'Ah,' Dorcas said, sprawling back against one of the standing stones. 'That makes more se-'

She stopped speaking abruptly when a low, hair-raising growl sounded over the crackling of the fire. Lily, who had been munching contentedly, grabbed her wand, her head snapping around to search for the origin of the noise. 'Oh. My. God,' Serena whispered, eyes locked on the black void between two of the stones. Her three companions shifted to stare with her, and a collective shiver ran down their spines as they spotted the malevolent glint of a pair of eyes sparking in the darkness beyond.

Dropping her sandwich, Ze shifted into a crouch, narrowing her eyes in an attempt to see what it was. 'I think it's –'

'It's a giant, spectral black dog,' Lily breathed, doing her best to get her feet under her without actually appearing to move. 'And it looks ready to rip out someone's throat.'

Serena let out a strangled groan of terror, and Ze felt herself swallow. Because, as Lily had spoken, the beast had stalked further into the circle, within range of the firelight. And it was indeed a dog – an enormous, shaggy black one, like a wolfhound gone mad. Well, madder. Gums were drawn back from teeth the size of paring knives, and that low, deadly growl was creeping across her skin like a plague –

And suddenly Dorcas was surging to her feet, cudgel grasped in hand, the Diadem of Chastity hanging drunkenly from one ear. 'Here,' she cried, 'that's the dog that steals my pants!'

*.*.*

Though he could hardly claim a genius-sized brain in his dog-shaped form, Sirius's nose was currently quite a bit stronger than a human's - and he knew the scent of murderous rage when he smelt it. One glimpse of the sturdy wooden truncheon Dorcas carried had him whimpering, and, with a churning of mud, turning tail to run.

'Dorcas, dogs don't wear pants –' he could hear Serena saying from somewhere behind him, but this was no help in slowing in Dorcas's footsteps.

'Come here you nasty, thieving little –' she was snarling, pounding after him like a demon straight out of hell, the Staff for Warding Off Uninvited Wildlife raised above her head like a sword of vengeance.

Back inside the stone circle Ze, Lily and Serena exchanged a look that slid from worry to resignation. 'What're the chances of her stopping before sunrise?'

'Depends on when she runs out of breath,' Ze sighed.

'Or falls down a hole,' Serena added.

'So…about five minutes?'

'Well, there is also the possibility of her being mauled by that grim hound,' Ze put in conversationally.

Serena sighed, straightened her crown of oak leaves, and held up her wand. 'So it's going to be a dramatic rescue then?'

Lily and Ze exchanged another look. 'Can we have a little more rescue than drama? Only I'm not a natural sprinter…'

*.

Death. Bad. Run! Sirius's canine instincts were shouting, roughly three minutes of dark forest ahead of Ze & Co., and a distressing thirty paces ahead of Dorcas. To be honest, he was glad he was facing her down in dog form – carrying all those musty books up and down the staircases of Hogwarts had really built up her stamina; had he been on two legs, Sirius didn't think he'd still be in the lead. She had stopped shouting threats of revenge by evisceration after the first tree branch had slapped her in the face, and Sirius wasn't sure which he preferred: constant promises of death and dismemberment, or the sinister pounding of feet on his heels.

Death and dismemberment, his limited intellect decided as his ears detected three more sets of footsteps joining the chase. He had a sneaking suspicion Ze was involved, and Lily as well – which meant his chances of being hexed into very small pieces had just increased exponentially. But they were all chasing him now, and that was the point. About half a second after his dim doggy brain had realised Dorcas meant to kill him, it had produced a slightly more intelligent thought: Castle. It had taken a few moments for this to connect, but once it did Sirius had realised that herein lay their salvation: if they were all set on running after him, all he had to was run in the direction he wanted them to go. Which was why he was churning through the underbrush along the forest's edge, curving out across the grounds and praying that James had managed to lure Moony in the opposite direction. Because Sirius was now leading Dorcas – and, he hoped, the others – straight into the moonlit open.

Dorcas exploded out of the trees behind him and, mere moments later, Ze followed. Lily and Serena were conserving their oxygen some thirty metres behind, but Lily found the breath to call, 'Dorcas, you nutter, slow down!'

Ze, who had almost drawn even with Dorcas now, panted out, 'This is crazy! Come on – let it go –'

But Dorcas was having none of it. Bent low for maximum aerodynamic potential, cudgel clutched to her side, she charged on with a martial light in her eye. 'That dog owes me twenty quid worth of knickers,' she called back to Ze over the sound of their footfalls. 'And a pair of socks.'

Ahead of them, Sirius wasn't bothering to try to work out the words – he might recall them later, and he might not. For now, all he cared about was the fact that they were halfway across the grounds to the castle, and the girls were still running full tilt after him. In the forest he heard the long, mournful howl of a wolf on the hunt, and put on an extra burst of speed. The muffled cry of, 'Did you hear that!' from behind told him that, finally, they were catching on to the situation.

Had anyone looked out of a window – perchance one facing the northwest prospect – they would have seen a string of white-clad runners chasing a speeding black blur across the monochrome landscape of Hogwarts By Night. Keen eyes might have spotted that the speeding blur was, in fact, some sort of quadrapodal beast, and that the rear two runners, who had been flagging before the eerie cry of the wolf split the night, had found a sudden second wind. Of even more interest would be the curious choice of wardrobe: after all, it isn't every night you see four young ladies skulking around in negligees, let alone re-enacting the plain of Marathon in them. And then there was the fact that one of them was shouting something about knickers… Yes, had anyone looked out of a window, they could have got quite an eyeful.

And that was exactly what Minerva McGonagall did.

*.

Sirius had let his survival instincts take over. There had been a moment of indecision where he had briefly considered returning to his normal shape and begging Ze to understand. And then he had remembered that it wasn't just Ze, and that even if were things would still get very sticky, and he had decided that he liked having his head attached to his body just a little too much to face down the girls of Gryffindor all alone. So he was running on little more than nerves and fleas as he skidded through the old loggia along the courtyard and dove behind the statue of Octavian the Odious mere moments before Dorcas careened around the corner.

'Bollocks!' came her seething hiss as she slid to a halt, eyes peering into the blackness.

'Bloody hell,' Ze wheezed, shuddering to a stop and dropping her hands to her knees. 'What are you, half ostrich?'

'It's got to be here,' Dorcas was saying, stalking back and forth between pools of shadow, jabbing into the darkness with her stick. 'It can't have just disappeared –'

'Er,' Ze said slowly, recalling previous experiences with Dorcas and the mysterious pants-stealing dog. 'Doesn't it usually just…disappear?'

Dorcas paused, mid-poke, and shifted her eyes to look at Ze without turning her head. 'Weeeell….'

'Look, we all saw it, didn't we?' Ze hastened to say, before Dorcas could start thinking she'd gone mad. Well, madder. 'So we know it's not just a figment of your imagination.'

'Yes, but –'

Lily and Serena chose that moment to come thundering into the courtyard, half supporting one another as they threw terrified looks over their shoulders. 'Sweet – Merlin,' Serena gasped. 'Massive – thing – teeth – chased us –'

It was Dorcas and Ze's turn to exchange a glance about invisible, possibly imaginary animals. 'Well we chased the dog all the way up here, so it can't have been behind you,' Ze began diplomatically.

She was surprised into silence when Lily shook her head. 'Not – the same – thing,' the redhead panted, clutching at a stitch in her side. 'Bigger. Meaner. More teeth.'

If Ze hadn't known that Lily wasn't the sort of person who played My-nightmare-is-bigger-than-your-nightmare, she might have rolled her eyes. As it was, she just wondered if fire whisky was known to cause hallucinations. 'Okay,' she said slowly, darting her eyes at Dorcas, who was still probing the shadows with both beady stare and stick. And then back to Serena and Lily, who had broken out in splotches and seemed to breathing through every available vent. 'I think we should turn in for the night, mm?'

Serena nodded so rapidly Ze could hear her teeth clacking in her head. 'I'll get you, my pretty,' Dorcas hissed into the shadows, shaking the Staff for Warding Off Uninvited Wildlife.

I am never drinking again, Ze vowed, the adrenaline beginning to fade from her system as she stepped back to effectively herd Lily and Serena on toward the door. A rustle in the shadows behind one of the creepy old magus statues had her starting and peering closer; for a moment, she could have sworn she saw two pin-points of light, like the gleam of moonlight on a pair of eyes, but in the next moment it was gone. Shaking her head at her own gullibility – honestly, seeing an invisible, knicker-nicking, dog? – she hurried to follow the others through the courtyard doors. She was just opening her mouth to suggest they cast a disillusionment charm when a voice like a whiplash said, 'Ah, Miss Meridian – how kind of you to join us.'

And then all she had time to do was think, Again? Seriously?

*.*.*

Professor McGonagall led them through the halls of Hogwarts with her wand held high, the brilliant lumos maximus charm casting a glow the filled the entirety of the corridor. Not a single prefect appeared to see what the fuss was about though, and the Gryffindor girls wisely kept silent. They followed, walking like ducklings in a line, through the door to her office and shuffled into a cowed row of grubby feet and dishevelled hair. Both the charge of the adrenaline and the warmth of the whisky had long since worn off, and they were very much aware that they looked like forest spirits – and not the cheerful, sprightly sort, but rather the twiggy, leaf-encrusted, sacrifice-bunnies-to-me-or-I-will-plague-your-vill age sort. It might have been vaguely atmospheric in the dark of the woods, but in the shabby tartan chic of McGonagall's office they just felt like fools. And so they swallowed down their nerves and stood, bracing themselves for a vicious "What in the name of Circe are you wearing?"

But what they heard, once the door had been shut and the professor had taken up an unusual stance just by the corner of her desk, was, 'I always wore the Diadem in my day.' Four heads shot up to see the feared deputy headmistress smiling mistily at the remnants of the Diadem of Chastity still hanging doggedly from Dorcas's bow. 'It was the bun,' McGonagall added, gesturing to her unnerving night-cap as though the flouncy pink monstrosity were anything like her usual tightly-wound coiffure. 'The crown needs something to anchor to.'

After a few moments of awful, wretched silence Dorcas said, 'Er…yeah…'

'I must say the armbands aren't quite up to par though,' the teacher sighed, inspecting the crumpled ring of foil still encircling Serena's upper arm. 'You should have had a tracery of vine scrolls, for authenticity.'

Lily swallowed audibly and said, in a voice much higher than usual, 'We'll, um, we'll be sure to remember that. For…next time.'

'Or you could simply request to use the proper artefacts,' Professor McGonagall said slyly.

'I don't think – wait,' Ze stopped, mid-denial of ever getting involved in this again. 'Proper…artefacts? You mean - '

'You mean you have them?' Serena gaped. 'Here?'

'Well of course,' came the amused reply. 'Did you think you were first students to ever try drawing down the moon?'

'Er…'

'In my day, of course, we did it properly – none of this nightdresses and chocolate wrappers business,' McGonagall went on, faintly censorious now. 'And you can be sure we were never caught.' There was a very significant glance here, and an appropriate shuffling of feet against the floor. 'But, Venus is quite bright tonight, and I can how the temptation might arise. An ideal time for raising the spirit of romance and encouraging fecundity -'

'Ah, Professor,' Lily began, but McGonagall raised a hand to stall her.

'We do not need to speak of it, Miss Evans,' she said primly. 'Such things remain between the Sisterhood, kept both secret and safe.'

'Sisterhood? It has a name?' Serena whispered to Ze, who fought back both a snigger and a shudder. Her brain was too busy thinking, so that's why you warned all the prefects off, lighting up the corridor like that – you don't want us caught tricked out like the Ancient Sisters of Whatever!

And McGonagall obliged her by saying, 'As you are obviously inexperienced, I shall give you the benefit of this one – and only - reprieve from punishment. However, you must not expect such leniency twice –'

'Er, Professor, if you don't mind,' Lily broke in again.

McGonagall looked somewhat snappish at having been interrupted. 'Well what is it, Miss Evans?'

'It's just…well…our things,' Lily said helplessly.

'Your…things?' the teacher repeated blankly.

'Our bags and stuff,' Ze hurried to explain. 'They're still on the grounds – down by the, er, the circle of standing stones. We…accidentally…left them?' she trailed off, the gradual rise of a pair of very potent eyebrows stealing her voice word by word.

'And the book,' Serena blurted out. 'We left the book – in the, er, well, the grass,' she admitted, cheeks flushing.

'In the grass?!' chorused Lily, Dorcas, and McGonagall all at once.

Serena glowered at Lily and Dorcas and then huffed out, 'I was overtaken by the moment, alright? But I don't think it should sit down there all night –'

'Of course it shouldn't!' Dorcas blustered. 'Poor thing –' Lily chose that moment to employ her elbows to excellent effect, and Dorcas was cringing and clutching her side, too busy trying to breathe to say anything else.

Which was a Very Good Thing, because McGonagall was doing something very, very strange. The teacher had taken one look out of the window, her mouth pinching down to deliver a ringing rebuke – no doubt on the insensitivity and irresponsibility of leaving valuable resources to moulder in the damp, and then suddenly her face…changed. Narrowed eyes darted wide, pursed lips fell slack, and then she was shaking her head, the brilliant moonlight glinting off her spectacles. 'No, I'm sure it will be fine,' she said, at a speed that came perilously close to babbling. 'Ancient book, after all, it will have endured worse. No, no, you can collect it tomorrow.'

Lily gaped. Dorcas looked ready to mutiny. But Serena – Serena was staring at McGonagall with an expression of frighteningly deep thought… 'Well, that settles that!' Ze said, far too cheerfully, standing on Serena's foot and mentally urging her to pass the word to Dorcas and Lily that it was Time To Go. 'To be honest, it's been a bit of a long night, hasn't it? Probably ought to be getting to bed…'

Professor McGonagall shot her a look that ought to have said "Shrink away, mere mortal, from the burning wrath of my terrible gaze!" but ended up with nothing more than "Yes, yes, we all know I'm scary, just pretend I've said boo." 'As usual Miss Meridian, you manage to be blindingly honest in the most roundabout of ways,' the teacher said drily. 'But I think it is best if you returned to Gryffindor tower. I don't believe I need to tell you not to stop anywhere along the way?' Four heads shook in emphatic unison. 'Then goodnight,' she said crisply. 'Sisters.'

'Don't say a word,' Lily whispered as they fled into the hallway. 'Until we're back in the tower, don't say a bloody word!'

*.*.*

'Sisters?' Ze repeated, aghast, the moment they had tumbled through the portrait hole. 'Sisters?' It was, by now, past one in the morning and they had the room to themselves – which was definitely an advantage, because there are just some things that can't be explained away with "well, you see, we had a drink or two…"

'She's lost it,' Dorcas said firmly. 'Calling us sisters. Letting us off detention. Leaving that book all by itself…'

There was an awkward moment as everyone contemplated the potential dangers of a book being left alone. And then: 'Didn't you think it was a bit weird, they way she didn't have us go get the stuff back?' Serena asked slowly.

'I want to know how she knew we were out there,' Lily snapped, stalking over to pace in front of the fire. 'No one saw us leaving – at least, no one that would have run to tell. So how did she know we were out of bounds?'

'I hadn't even thought of that,' Dorcas murmured, dropping into one of the squashy armchairs before the hearth and absently removing the wreckage of her crown.

'Hadn't thought of it?' Ze repeated, staring, disbelieving, back and forth between them. 'Who needs to think about it? Or have you forgotten the bit where we were running around yelling our heads off in plain sight of the windows?'

'Er….'

'Good point,' Lily conceded. And then her spine straightened, her eyes narrowing down. 'But if she saw us – running, I mean – if that's how she knew what we were doing, why didn't she come to help?' she continued, voice hardening. 'She must have seen that thing that was chasing us –'

'You mean the thing we were chasing,' Dorcas corrected immediately, her own eyes narrowing to slits at the thought.

'No, I'm talking about the thing that came out of the wo – oh, but you were so far ahead you wouldn't have seen it, would you?' Lily said, the last of it muttered almost to herself.

Ze scrubbed her hands tiredly over her eyes. 'You said it was like the dog, only bigger?' she asked. 'I'm sorry – it's not that I don't believe you, I just –'

'No, no, I can see how it would sound completely ridiculous. But I promise you, it was there. I didn't get a very good look since we were, well, running away, but it was chasing us and it sounded really nasty. And it was definitely bigger than the dog, wasn't it Serena?' Lily asked, turning to the brunette, who had sunk onto the chair beside Dorcas's.

'Hm?' Serena asked, jumping slightly, as though she'd been surprised. 'Oh, right, the….thing. You know,' she said contemplatively, 'I think we might have imagined it. I mean, we've definitely had a bit to drink, and –'

'We did not imagine it,' Lily snapped, indignant and impatient. 'It broke out of the trees just as we got to the top of the hill. And we could hear it howling before that.'

'Well…I'm just trying to say that maybe it was a trick of the shadows, or something,' Serena said doggedly. 'I'm always imagining stuff like that in the dark, scaring myself to death. I just think maybe we heard something in the forest and blew it out of proportion.'

Lily was gaping at her, clearly unable to believe that Serena was deserting her in her hour of need. But Serena sounded firm – whether because she actually believed what she was saying, or just because she wanted to believe was anyone's guess. And, Ze had to admit, her explanation was a plausible one. 'Okay,' the redhead said at last, sounding more confused than upset. 'If that's what you think…'

'I think we ought to try to catch that dog,' Dorcas said staunchly, and everyone looked over to see her sitting with her fingers steepled beneath her chin.

And yet another moment of silence as everyone thought madly about how to reply. 'Do you really think –' Serena began, only to be cut crossly off by Dorcas.

'I know you all think I'm completely mental, but that dog is real, okay?' she snapped. 'I have seen it – in our dormitory, and now out there!' she jabbed a finger towards the grounds for emphasis. 'And I am telling you, it is the creature that steals our underpants.'

Lily nodded slowly while Ze nobly refrained from mentioning that none of her knickers had ever gone missing. At least, not unless she'd given them away. Finally, Lily spoke up, 'Well,' she said slowly, 'if we're going to do something about the problem, then we'll need to gather a bit of data first, won't we? Figure out when it comes in and out, how often it's spotted –'

'I've already got charts,' Dorcas interrupted, zeal infusing her voice. 'And a statistical analysis of the last four years. Now if we could just set up a trap…'

'And on that note,' said Ze, 'I am going to bed.'

*.*.*

Sirius had had to restrain James by main force to keep him from flying up the girls' staircase to see with his own eyes that Lily Evans was, in fact, still alive. If Sirius hadn't watched Ze enter the castle in full possession of all her limbs, he might have been doing the exact same thing. But, given that a) it was ten minutes until sunrise and b) they'd had enough close brushes with death for the night, he'd felt his decision was sound. And they'd needed to pick the burrs off before class anyway, so they really hadn't had time. The morning after the full moon was always a trifle pain-filled, what with scrubbing out the cuts and mild abrasions a night spent running through the woods inevitably left them with. While Remus collapsed into a heap in the Shrieking Shack, his three friends had the task of sneaking back into their dormitory and preparing for the school day without getting caught.

'Think Moony's alright?' Peter asked James as they shuffled down the staircase into the common room, having just done the hastiest shower-and-dress in the history of Hogwarts. 'He was pretty nasty toward the end.'

James shook his head, his hair standing even more on end than usual. 'Must've been a lunar flare or something,' he mumbled. 'But we got him back inside, so that's done. And he gets to have a lie in, the lucky bastard,' he added through a gaping yawn.

Sirius knew that James didn't feel nearly as cavalier about it as he was acting: Remus had come dangerously close to the castle the night before, having scented the girls and gone chasing after them. It was a werewolf's natural instinct to attack, and the smell of four females had likely signalled a feast. James had nearly got himself torn apart in his efforts to force Moony back into the forest, and if Sirius hadn't come charging down the hill to help at the very last second, he might not have managed it. Peter, his animagus legs woefully short, had only arrived after the drama had been over, and neither James nor Sirius had had the time – or breath – to tell him anything about what had happened. It would probably be best not to talk about it, anyway; there was a chance that Remus's memories of chasing after someone would be hazy and half-formed, and there was no point in making him feel guiltier about his condition than he already did, especially if it involved telling him that he'd attempted to attack people he knew.

'You awake, or just walking around?' a voice asked, and the reflexive smile was stretching across Sirius's face even before he'd looked down to locate the speaker. 'There he is,' Ze chuckled, 'bright-eyed as usual.'

'You're one to talk,' Sirius snorted as she stifled a yawn of her own. 'I take it you missed your beauty-'

'Sirius,' she interrupted suddenly, 'what's happened to your eye?'

Before he could register what she was even talking about, her hand was brushing his face, her thumb skimming over a shallow scratch that bisected his eyebrow and curved around the corer of his eye. It was hardly his only reminder of last night, but thankfully his clothes covered most of the others – although he did have a fleeting desire to invite her to gently stroke those as well. He'd never thought of her as the mothering sort, but it was all he could do not to lean into the touch and tell her everything. But the suspicious glint warring with the concern in her eyes had him formulating an excuse automatically. 'Bit of an accident last night,' he grimaced, managing to strike the perfect balance between guilt and a rueful grin. 'Experiment gone wrong,' he added, tilting his head to indicate the boys' dormitories. 'Everyone's okay, but I wouldn't go up there if I was you – smells positively foul.'

Ze, long familiar with the myriad connotations of "experiment", felt her nostrils pinching closed in conditioned response. 'Gross. Thanks for not blowing up the tower, though.'

Like you would have noticed, Miss Exhibitionist. 'Well, we do what we can,' he said aloud, adding a yawn just for show. 'You going to breakfast?'

'Is there somewhere else to be?' Bumping shoulders companionably, they passed Serena and Lily, who was under the watchful gaze of James as he checked her over for potential injuries – at a safe distance, of course. 'See you down there?' Ze called to her friends, who were in deep conversation about something.

'Yeah,' Lily replied, waving a hand absently.

'What're they gossiping about?' Sirius wanted to know as Ze crawled through the portrait hole.

'Uuuhh,' said Ze, who was much less accomplished and lying on the spot. She knew that Serena and Lily were likely discussing either the plans for capturing Dorcas's Knicker Grim, or their strategy for returning the dew-soaked book of rituals to Miss Pince without being flayed alive. 'Girl problems?' she blurted out. 'Er, yeah, 'cos Serena has really bad cramps and –'

Sirius's face had drained of all colour and he said, 'Right, yeah, got it!' in a strangely high voice.

So that really does work, Ze thought wonderingly. Good to know…

Sirius had dragged James along by the scruff of his neck, and they spent the remainder of the walk down planning out the evening training session for quidditch. If Ze noticed that James looked even more worse for wear than Sirius did, she politely said nothing about it. Peter, who barely seemed to know where he was, let alone that he was awake, trudged along on James's other side, making occasional grunts to let the world know he was, despite appearances, still alive. There was a slight revival when the scent of breakfast washed over them, and James and Peter lumbered towards the tables like a pair of zombies scenting a fresh corpse.

Sirius would have been hot on their heels if Ze hadn't raised one hand and given a friendly wave in the direction of the Hufflepuff table. Completely confused, Sirius turned in time to spot the most unwelcome sight of Colin Cross. He gaped as Cross, who must have entered the Hall ahead of them, waved back with his usual wide grin as he took his seat at the Hufflepuff table. He broke off abruptly, however, when he felt the scorching heat of Sirius's glare. Noticing the change in expression, Ze turned to find out what had caused it and frowned crossly when she discovered it was Sirius. 'Stop –'

'He's smiling at you?' Sirius asked incredulously, unable to believe this turn of events. First the little prick ran away from her, and now he was grinning like an old chum?

'We're friends,' Ze shot back, her eyebrows lowering dangerously. 'And I'll thank you not to go messing it up.'

'Me? What have I –'

'I talked with him, yesterday,' she informed Sirius. 'I wasn't just going to leave it-' she broke off, pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head. 'Look, we've made our peace, okay? He's really nice, and I'd like it to stay that way, so could you please not glare at him every five minutes?'

'I am not glaring!' Sirius glared. 'I'm glowering. There's a difference.'

'Whatever,' Ze snapped. 'Look,' she continued in a less-inflammatory tone, 'I know you're not keen on him, but he's my friend, and hopefully that isn't going to change. He admitted that you make him nervous, so if you could please stop terrorising him that would make my life a lot easier.'

'I make him nervous?' Sirius asked, definitely pleased. And then, after catching Ze's glowered response: 'Just friends?'

A faint smile twitched the corner of her mouth. 'Yes – just friends. And I'm not asking you to start hanging out with him or anything, but if you could stop looking like you're going to crucio him at any moment I would really appreciate it.'

Sirius had the conscience to look sheepishly abashed. 'Is it really that bad?'

'Yes,' Ze said, definitely almost smiling now.

'And this is what you want?'

'Yes, it is.'

'Well, if it makes you happy,' he said, smiling slightly as he nodded his acquiescence.

Blushing, Ze said, 'It does,' and motioned for him to proceed her to the breakfast table. Hoping madly that she really had just caught him at being jealous, she beamed at his back and murmured, 'You have no idea just how much.'

*.*.*

Ze's jubilation didn't lessen as the day wore on, but it was gradually overtaken by her growing exhaustion. It wouldn't have been so bad, she later thought, if she hadn't been surrounding by people ready to drop dead of fatigue. Lily, Serena and Dorcas had sat up for hours, going over charts and plotting traps, and by the second class of the day they were barely able keep their eyes open. They had woken Ze just before sunrise to go and gather their rucksacks and shoes from the grounds, and if she had thought she was tired then, it was nothing to what she felt as she stumbled through Transfiguration. McGonagall had given her an alarmingly sly wink when she caught Ze nodding off, and Ze had resolved not to ever sleep again if it meant avoiding that level of secret-society-ness.

But she and her dorm-mates weren't the only ones having trouble staying awake. Sirius, James and Peter were practically drooling with it, and Ze's few glimpses of Clive revealed him to have darkly circled eyes and a drawn, haggard expression. After Peter collapsed against his desk, snoring, for the third time, Ze gave up on pinching herself to stay awake and started a letter to Jack. She got as far as You won't believe what's been going on before she realised she had no idea what to say. After staring helplessly at the blackboard for several minutes, she finally decided on the full, unedited version, and set to scribbling.

Three feet of parchment later, Sirius poked her in the ribs and mumbled, 'you aren't actually taking notes, are you?'

'Please,' Ze mumbled back derisively. 'I'm pouring my heart out to a wise and learned correspondent, hoping that once I've bared all my troubles and worries I'll get some sound advice.'

'Oh,' Sirius said softly, too dazed and tired to discern if she was taking the piss. 'Think you could put in a few questions for me?'

*.*.*

By the time they had all stumbled down to the quidditch pitch for training, a stage of glassy complacency had set in – as had a light, misting rain. Zeke and Rob, the only two members of the team who looked to have slept in the last week, were giving one another confused glances over the heads of their near-catatonic team-mates. Clive, after fidgeting nervously for a few minutes, stumbled over to stand by Ze. He looked as though he wanted to tell her something terribly important, but Ze couldn't seem to get her thoughts into enough order to ask him what it was, and so they stared blankly into space without saying a word.

Once he had them lined up and mounted on their brooms, James gazed silently at them for such a long time that Ze finally decided he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open. She was scared out of her skin when he suddenly barked, 'All defensive manoeuvres! Now!' and took off for the goal hoops at a fast clip. There was a moment of indecision in the ranks, and then everyone drifted into something that might loosely have been called position. It was the saddest, most sluggish quidditch practise in the history of the sport. The only exceptions were Rob and Zeke, who, after accidentally bludgering a stationary (and possibly napping) Sirius, did their best to contain their charges to the empty end of the pitch. The rest of the side was in slow-motion chaos. Periodically James would shout things like "We've got a match on Saturday!" and "How d'you think we're going to win against Ravenclaw if we can't stay awake?", but his heart wasn't in it. And, after he ploughed into Clive clutching the quaffle, not the snitch, everyone else's heart seemed to go out of it too.

They splashed onto the soupy pitch a half hour later, and James mumbled something about improving reflexes and not kipping mid-air. Without so much as a word, they turned as one for the changing rooms and the promise of long, hot showers. Ze almost followed the rest of the side through the door marked Men's before she remembered that she had her own hot-water paradise to enjoy. Smiling stupidly, she pushed through her door and tracked mud and grass across the brilliant tile floor to stand beneath the blessed shower of steaming hot spray. Never getting out, never getting out, she hummed to herself, her body growing heavy with exhaustion.

Never…getting…out….

*.*.*

On the boys' side Sirius was humming the same nonsense tune, the hot water slowly soothing his muscles and his mind. He might have dropped off completely if James hadn't chosen that moment to fall asleep against the shower wall and collapse with a splat! against the tiles. After hauling him upright and slapping a bit of awareness into him, Sirius and Clive dragged James into the changing area and pushed him in the general direction of his clothes, where he promptly attempted to put his shirt on in the place of his shorts.

Sirius was distracted from the spectacle by the sound of Clive's voice saying, 'I didn't know they sold those at Zonko's.'

At the mention of his favourite retailer, Sirius's ears perked up, and he wandered over to see what it was Clive and Rob were talking about. 'They've only just got them in,' Rob was explaining, gesturing to whatever was concealed in his palm. 'Brand new model – works on surfaces up to forty centimetres thick.'

'Complete waste of money,' Zeke said with a shake of his head.

'That's bollocks!' Rob said indignantly. 'This,' he shook his fist, 'is priceless.'

'What is it?' Sirius asked.

'An All-Seeing Eye,' Rob replied proudly. 'Got in on Saturday.'

'I thought they were rubbish,' Clive shrugged. 'Zonko's would never carry them before, they didn't work well enough for the shop's standards.'

'The joke shop has standards?' Zeke asked with an arch of his brows.

'Well, you know what I mean. Probably after the first few people realised they didn't work at all, word got around and they stopped selling them,' Clive said, turning away to find his shoes.

'I'm telling you it works. Look,' Rob continued, stepping over to the wall with a sly grin, 'let's say there something on the other side of this wall – something you'd really like to have a look at. Like, say, a naked girl, right?' Sirius's eyes narrowed: that was the wall that ran between Ze's changing room and their own. 'So you just pop it up there,' he pressed a small, opalescent dot against the wall's surface, 'and give it a few seconds to activate.' Grinning wickedly, Rob winked at Clive. 'I can hear her shower running, should be perfect.'

Sirius's vision had gone red. Rob was talking about Ze – his Ze, whom no one else in the entire world was allowed to picture naked. And not only was he talking about her, he was proposing to use her like some sort of lab rat in an experiment involving a voyeuristic toy. 'Right, should be ready now, so let's have a –'

But whatever Rob thought he was having turned out to be a pipe dream, because Sirius had already launched himself forward and was punching every bit of Rob he could reach.

A/N –

and how's that for an update? sadly, this is a complete product of procrastination as exams have arrived and i can't be bothered to revise. BUT, it is an update in less than two weeks, so let's think about the good stuff...

i should probably say that, yes, it is extremely unlikely that the doors to Hogwarts Castle are left unlocked during the night, and therefore our heroines would never be able to just walk back in, but... literary freedom? it's got to count for something. on that note, large parts of this chapter will be further explained by various different characters in future - i realise that it seems disjointed, but there are various little ends that need to be tied up and it has to start (and, hopefully, end) somewhere.

thanks to all who have read and reviewed - i especially appreciate those of you who took the time to help find mistakes in Chapter 32. editing that is next on my To Do list, so hopefully that'll be done today as well. again, thanks for reading, and please leave a review!


	34. The Bluebird Effect

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 34: The Bluebird Effect

Ze noticed the black eye. It was the sort of thing that was impossible to miss, even when you were half asleep and wandering out of a changing room onto a twilit quidditch pitch. Stumbling to a halt in front of the waiting crowd of boys, still ensconced in the warm afterglow of a hot shower and clean clothes, she was too busy taking stock of Rob's war-wounds to notice the fact that the rest of the team were looking decidedly awkward. She considered being surprised by the fact that Rob was quite cheerful in spite of looking like a mugging victim, but decided that that would take entirely too much effort. And anyway, Rob was all sorts of weird, so one more quirk wasn't likely to make a difference. She was, however, completely flummoxed when – at the prompting of Sirius's wand digging into his back – Rob stepped forward and said in a serious, honest voice, 'Ze, I'm very sorry.'

Despite being so knackered she could barely stand, Ze felt the bottom of her stomach drop out, and she stopped dead just as her foot touched the grass. 'Oh shit, what've you gone and done now?' she croaked desperately, the sweet cloud of lassitude brought on by her shower dissipating like so much mist. 'You haven't done that Verruca Vexation hex on the showers again, have you? Only last time -'

'No no – nothing like that,' he hastened to assure her, which had her knees knocking together with fear. Rob attempting reassurance could only mean the sky was about to fall. 'It's just that I owe you an apology,' he said earnestly, and Ze wondered if the buzzing in her ears and greying of her vision were signs of the approaching apocalypse.

'A –a – a - what?' she managed to stutter out.

'An apology,' he repeated, casting a quick look over his shoulder at Sirius, who glared so fiercely James half expected Rob's head to go up in flames. 'For being underhanded and chauvinistic and objectifying you to serve my own immoral purposes.'

I'm dreaming, Ze thought with a slight, dizzy nod. I have to be – there's no way Rob in real life knows what "chauvinistic" means, let alone how to pronounce it. No, definitely dreaming – I'm probably dead asleep on my desk in Charms, and any minute I'll wake up and realise that I'm not really outside the changing rooms with everyone staring at me at all. But at least I'm not naked in this one…

And then Rob poked her in the shoulder, none-too-gently, and said, 'Oi, Zaz, you awake?'

Ze shook her head. And when this only made her vision blur worse, shook it again. Staring up at a still-vibrating Rob, she heard herself say thickly, 'No, I don't think I am.'

'Huh,' he said speculatively, bending down to peer at her. 'That's weird – 'cos you're definitely talking to me.'

'You do realise,' Ze said, sensing that something important was trying to happen here, and that she should probably get through it before the rest of her sanity emigrated to Antarctica along with her morals and common sense. 'You do realise, that you've just said "I'm sorry"?'

'Well of course I have,' Rob nodded. 'That was the point.'

'But…' she paused, lips pursed as the hamster powering her brain jogged sluggishly on its exercise wheel. 'But you don't apologise,' she finally concluded. 'Ever. Not even to Zeke.'

'Yeah, well, he usually deserves whatever I've done to him,' was the shrugging reply. 'And you, er, don't. Didn't. So I'm sorry.'

Ze considered this for a few moments. And then: 'I don't believe you.'

Rob let out a nervous laugh, his eyes darting back to Sirius, who was still looking murderous. 'Well I really am – sorry, that is. And apologising. Which is what you do when you're sorry –'

'Yes, but why? Why are you apologising, I mean?'

'Er…well, because I might have unintentionally – and I really do mean unintentionally, nothing personal at all about using you as a test subject – um, well I might have, you know, sort of started to –'

'He slighted your virtue,' Zeke said helpfully, sensing that if someone didn't interject a bit of sense, they'd be here all night. And he was hungry. 'Completely unacceptable.'

'Right, and then Sirius brutally assaulted me and said that if I didn't apologise he'd cut off my –'

'Oh,' said Ze with a fuzzy smile. Sirius. 'Well that's alright then. I'm sure you've learned your lesson. Can we go to supper now? Only I'm starved.'

Rob's mouth dropped open slightly, and then an odd – and, frankly, alarming – spark of cogitation lit in his eyes. 'Yeah,' he said slowly. 'Yeah sure – after you.' And, gesturing for her to proceed him up the hill, he flashed a triumphant grin at the rest of the team over her head.

'This,' Allister whispered to Clive, 'can't be good.'

It wasn't precisely good – but, as they stumbled up the hill toward the Great Hall and much needed sustenance, it wasn't bad either. Clive, who had taken one look at Ze's drooping eyes and decided now wasn't the time, disappeared in the entry hall with the excuse that he wasn't particularly hungry and had loads of homework to catch up on. Ze, James and Sirius barely noticed his defection; their homing instincts had scented meat and roast veg, and there was no distracting them now. Their team-mates sat themselves cautiously at the Gryffindor table, watching as they shovelled down steak pie with robotic precision.

Seated on the other side of Zeke, Rob occasionally snuck glances at Ze, his eyes glittering as he did so. When, after all but licking their plates clean, the seventh years yawned and rose from the table as one, he made a point of calling, 'night Ze!' She waved absently over her shoulder, already shuffling towards the door between James and Sirius.

'What are you up to –' Zeke began to ask, but was interrupted as Clive clambered out from underneath the table and slid into the seat James had just vacated.

'Bloody – where did you come from?' Allister gaped.

'When a mummy and a daddy love one another very much,' was the patronising reply as Clive peered furtively across the room at the Ravenclaw table and then began to heap his plate with food, 'they touch one another in a special way and –'

'What I mean is why'd you climb up from under the table?' Allister specified testily. 'You went up to the common room before we ever came in here.'

'No I didn't – I just said I was, in case anyone was listening,' Clive explained through a mouthful of pie.

'That's disgusting,' Zeke mumbled.

Allister was still looking thoroughly perplexed. 'Then where've you been?'

'Under the table looking for a seat.'

'What, for the last fifteen minutes?'

'It's a long table,' Clive shrugged.

'Why're you crawling –'

Zeke sighed. 'Just buy her flowers mate,' he advised Clive. 'Harder on the pockets, but easier on the knees.'

'Only if you've forgotten the grovelling,' Clive mumbled.

'Who needs flowers –' Allister began again, only to have Rob sigh and pat his shoulder.

'Allister, my lad, there are some things a man must have revealed to him in time,' the red-haired boy said solemnly. 'All too soon the changing face of love shall expose itself to you, so count your blessing whilst you may.'

'Ha!' Zeke snorted. 'Like you know anything about counting blessings. Don't listen to him Alli – he's a complete knob.'

'I know that,' Allister muttered.

'There is currently a break in peaceful negotiations between Claudia and myself,' Clive explained, emphasising the point with a particularly vicious stab of his fork, 'hence my masterful subterfuge on entering the Hall. I'm trying to avoid having my ears – among other things – snapped off.'

Zeke winced in commiseration. 'What's happened then?' But Clive only bowed his head over his food and shook it, clearly not in the mood to talk.

'Ah, well, we're all crossed in love now and again,' Rob said with as much philosophical pretension as he could muster.

This feeble showing earned him three disbelieving, scornful glances. 'Crossed in love?' Zeke repeated, his face a mask of incredulity. 'The only things you're crossed in are good sense and wanking – and thank Merlin only the first one's permanent!'

Clive and Allister laughed, but Rob pulled himself up with dignity he must have stolen off the nearest corpse and said, 'I'll have you know that I'm currently in the midst of a romantic contretemps – one which I had no idea how to end until this very evening.'

'Contretemps?' Clive repeated confusedly. 'Have you swallowed a dictionary along with your pie?'

'I knew the house elves would get him back eventually,' Allister nodded, suspicions confirmed.

'You haven't hit your head, have you?' Zeke was asking worriedly. 'Or been drinking stuff out of the unlabelled potions vials?'

'Please,' sneered Rob. 'What do you think this is, last week?'

'If you're trying to say you've matured since then, I'm dragging you straight to hospital,' Zeke shot right back.

'Well maybe not matured,' Rob allowed, 'but I've certainly grown up. Enough to see how terrible it can be to live under the tyranny of love.'

'You've finally lost your mind,' Zeke said over the rim of his goblet.

'At least it's something he won't miss much,' Clive muttered, reaching for the pudding.

'I've gained insight,' Rob snapped, 'not gone deaf. Anyway, it's not like I'm saying I'm in love.'

'Thank god for that,' Allister said with feeling.

'I know,' Clive agreed. 'I don't think they'd let him do a bonding ceremony with a goat.'

'Or his own hand –'

'Oi! Still here,' Rob cried, waving his hands. 'Still not deaf!''Well then stop leaving yourself open to insult and tell us what's going on,' Zeke suggested wryly.

Deciding not to waste his pouting talents on such unfeeling souls, Rob grinned mischievously and got down to business. 'Well, you now how Ze fancies me –'

'WHAT!?' Even if it hadn't been a brilliant three-part harmony, the volume of the shout would have got everyone's attention anyway. When they realised the whole Hall was now staring at them curiously, the three boys executed a much-practised sheepish-wave-cum-apologetic-grimace and waited for backs to be turned once more.

'What d'you mean-'

'You really have gone crazy –'

'Ze? Our Ze? -'

Immune to the furious hisses and whispers, Rob nodded sagely and tried not to look too pleased with himself. 'Completely head over heels,' he said smugly. 'Arse over end, tip over tea kettle, knees over knockers – she fancies me rotten.'

'She fancies you dead, you mean,' Clive spluttered.

'Yeah, after some of the things you've done –'

'Can't really blame her –'

'That, my friends, is merely a smokescreen. A diversion. A way of hiding her true feelings,' Rob said wisely. 'Not that she does a very good job of it,' he added. 'She's always laughing at my jokes and making excuses to spend time with me.'

'Rob, she's laughing at you, not your jokes,' Clive tried to tell his friend. 'And she doesn't make excuses to hang out with you, she just shows up for quidditch training.'

'Oh and what, the fact that she was embarrassed I'd seen her bra was a coincidence?' Rob asked sardonically. 'Or that she was furious with me for kissing Dorcas that day in the common room? You remember – she thumped me right in the head when she caught us. And then she went and turned herself into a girl, trying to get me to notice her, and –'

'And you are a complete idiot,' Zeke interrupted. ''Cos she wasn't embarrassed you'd seen her bra, she was furious with you for showing it to everyone else, and she wasn't angry that you were snogging Dorcas because she fancies you, she was angry because you were embarrassing her friend. And she didn't turn herself into a girl – she's always been a girl, she just got sick of never being treated like one. S'got nothing to do with you mate – nothing at all.'

Rob gave him a look that said "go on – pull the other one, it's got bells on". 'Didn't you hear her tonight?' he asked. 'At the quidditch pitch? Saying she'd forgive me because clearly I learned my lesson?'

'Yeah, and do you remember that you were apologising because Sirius had just beaten you bloody and had some very creative ideas about acquainting your bits with a cheese grater?' Clive shot back.

'Well of course he would,' Rob replied, as if this were the most sensible thing in the world. 'They're best mates, aren't they? She's probably asked him to help her out –'

'Rob, she hasn't asked Sirius to help her out,' Clive said very seriously, attempting to catch Rob's gaze. 'At least, not like that – if she's asked him anything, it's to shag her rotten already because she's tired of waiting for it.'

'And so far he hasn't said yes, has he?' Rob grinned, refusing to be swayed. 'Trust me, the whole Ze-Sirius sexual-tension, we're-completely-in-love-so-why-don't-we-just-shag -already? situation is all a ruse – you'll see.'

'D'you think it was something he ate?' Allister asked Clive, bewildered.

'Rob,' Zeke was saying slowly and seriously, 'Ze does not fancy you. She fancies –'

'If she doesn't fancy me,' Rob asked with the air of a cardsharp producing a handful of aces, 'then why's she sending me these?'

The other three froze, peering confusedly at the much-creased letters Rob was holding aloft with a supremely smug smile. Each bit of folded parchment was inscribed with the letter 'R', scrawled with a fantastically florid flourish and an artistic splatter of ink. 'Here, those're the creepy letters you've been getting at breakfast,' Zeke said, snatching one out of his friend's grasp and unfolding it to squint at the handwriting.

'Yeah,' Rob sighed, grinning broadly. 'Brilliant, aren't they?'

'Rob, she's practically sending you death threats,' Zeke said slowly, looking up from the to peer into his friend's face, apparently seeking any small sign of sanity.

Allister, who was reading over Zeke's shoulder, looked up with an expression of perplexed disgust. 'It says she hopes you enjoy the treats…and then something about learning to swallow your own shit.'

'Metaphor,' Rob nodded wisely. ''Cos chocolate's brown, see, and so is sh –'

'You ate it, didn't you?' Zeke interrupted, his head wagging slowly. 'Whatever it was she sent you with the note – you ate it without even looking to see what it was.'

'Well…' Rob stalled. 'But, I mean, so they tasted like shit – probably just a spell, right?'

'You might want to buy a new toothbrush,' Clive said after a moment's pause, during which everyone tried not to think too deeply on the subject.

'Look,' Rob said, obviously keen to move the topic on, 'my point is that she's sending me these letters – and all they talk about is what I've been doing. Like she's reprimanding me –'

'Since when do you know the word reprimand?' Clive asked bemusedly.

'It's here, in Letter Number 2,' Zeke replied, his eyes skimming over the lines of elegant, flourishing script. 'Says he deserves to be reprimanded for being "an insalubrious personage and perpetrator of malicious, nefarious pranks."' He glanced up at Rob. 'Did you go and get a dictionary from the library, or just nick one off some third year?'

'Second year,' Rob shrugged. 'But I really needed it – I mean, insalubrious?'

'This one's got misanthropic, vexatious, lascivious and inconceivable,' Allister reported from Letter Number 1.

Clive glanced over his shoulder, brows furrowed. 'I don't think that means what she thinks it means.'

'Can we get over the vocabulary lessons?' Rob snapped, impatient. 'The point is, those letters talk about everything I've been doing – and I mean everything. Whoever's writing them knows exactly where I am every minute of every day, which got me thinking. Because the only person – well, female person – who knows that much about me is Ze. Ergo, it must be her!'

'Ergo?' Clive mumbled.

'A dictionary does not a logician make,' Zeke sighed. 'Look mate, this is Hogwarts, right? There's loads of people who could be carrying a grudge – anyone could be following you around, or asking questions, or just being really creepy and spying on you. I mean, you probably aren't the only one with an All Seeing Eye, are you?'

'Ah ha!' Rob cried, and Clive half expected a rabbit to be produced from a hat somewhere in the vicinity of his left hand. 'But those only went on sale last Saturday, didn't they? And that first letter talks about stuff that happened weeks ago. No, it's somebody close to me, somebody obsessed –'

'Somebody who isn't Ze,' Clive stressed.

'You're wrong,' Rob shook his head, beaming. 'You are so completely wrong. She wants me.'

Rolling his eyes at Clive over his friend's shoulder, Zeke said, 'Okay Rob, so you think Ze wants you – brilliant. But can I just suggest that, in the interest of you hanging onto your life and most of your limbs, you not say anything about it to anyone else?'

For a moment Rob looked perplexed, and then he broke into another wide smile, winking. 'Aaah – I see what you mean, not embarrassing her, letting her take her own time in admitting her feelings –'

'Mostly I meant Sirius not going Uther Pendragon on you and throwing your mutilated corpse off of the Astronomy Tower,' Zeke sighed. 'But, you know, however you want to phrase it.'

'Oh don't you worry about that,' Rob assured them, tapping the side of his nose. 'I've got a plan.'

'Oh shit,' came the chorus of groans.

*.*.*

'N-ngh-night Progsie,' Sirius managed through a yawn as he stumbled into the Gryffindor common room. James, who was already trudging up the boy's staircase, slumped so far forward his knuckles were dangling by his knees, just gave a noncommittal grunt in reply. 'Long day,' Sirius said wisely to his remaining companion, and fell backward onto the squashy cushions of the settee below the nearest window.

'Yeah,' Ze agreed sleepily. She was about to tell Sirius she was too knackered for a chat, but by the time she'd got her mouth open, he'd hooked one foot behind her knee and she was toppling onto the cushions beside him. 'Thanks,' she said instead, and felt her mental acuity drop another ten points at being this close to proper sleep. Oh, alright, and at being this close to Sirius, too. It reminded her of the afternoon before, when she'd been standing beside his bed, reciting a litany of all the reasons she shouldn't climb into his four-poster with him. On the list "potential for accusations of sexual assault" had been right below "might mistake me for someone else and call me by the wrong name". Feeling that she had recently reached her humiliation quota for, oh, the next millennium, Ze had bravely refrained…and she'd been regretting it ever since. Now, however, she was sprawled beside him, which felt infinitely better than just pulling a blanket up over him and sneaking off. He was close, and warm, and smelled nice and she was beginning to think that it might be worth turning him into some sort of animal just to see what kissing him was like. Not that she could tell him that –

'I've got a question for you,' came Sirius's sleepy voice.

'Mmm?' she replied, a distant part of her glad Sirius couldn't see what she was thinking. Mostly because she was currently imagining what he would look like as a goldfish.

'It's weird,' he warned. Ze, too tired to form words, just shot him a look that said "and this is different from normal how?" 'Did you come up to our dormitory yesterday?'

Ze's body tried to go stiff with nervousness. Fortunately, all higher brain function had ceased about the time she'd landed on the cushions, so the best she managed was an erratic twitching of the legs. 'Y-y-yeah,' she yawned, all defences down. 'You were all asleep. Whas' with that, anyway?'

'Knackered,' Sirius shrugged, his voice taking on the low, faintly rough quality of the semi-somnolent. 'Why'd you come up?'

'Hmm,' Ze mumbled, eyes fluttering closed as she tried to remember. 'Something…about…black eyeliner,' she managed to say. 'But you looked so nice…' Her head rolled to the side and landed on Sirius's shoulder, and it felt so nice she let it stay there. 'Why'd you punch Rob anyway?'

'He's a bastard,' Sirius said with flat conviction. The small voice of his common sense said, this is like listening to a conversation between two vicars who've got into the communion wine.

'Well, yes,' Ze replied turning slightly so that she could look at him without having to lift her head away from his shoulder.

'Wanted to see you naked,' Sirius continued, his arm absently snaking round Ze's shoulders. 'Not on. So I punched him. A lot.'

Ze nodded slowly, her brain fogging up as she tried to process this information over the growing warmth of Sirius's arm. But it didn't seem to want to take, so she just rubbed her cheek against his jumper and let it pass her by – she could always worry about it later, couldn't she? Now she was just…too…tired…

'Did you take my shoes off?' Sirius asked into the stillness.

'Eh?' Ze asked, aware enough to know that she wasn't up to taking anyone's shoes off, not even her own.

'Yesterday. When you came up. To ours. Did you take my shoes off?' Sirius repeated, the words stringing together slowly, and Ze's head was so close to his chest she swore she felt more than heard them.

'Yeah,' she replied with a faint smile, the sight of him, so gorgeous sprawled out on his sheets, replaying against the inside of her eyelids. 'Thought you'd be more comfortable.' Something was tickling at the back of her head, something uncomfortably like thinking, and she heard her voice slur slightly as she asked, 'how'd you know it was me?'

'Could smell you when I woke up,' was the reply, rumbling again in his chest. 'And you told me I needed a blanket,' he added, feeling both shivery and smug as he recalled the kind of blanket she'd been in his dream.

'You looked cold,' she shrugged slightly, almost woozily, as she remembered how she'd wanted to slip in beside him. Almost exactly as she was now, only then she'd been tempted to wake him up…She might want to wake him now, too. Yes, she definitely did. She wanted him…awake…and alert…and…goldfish…

'I was – well – I was just…wondering,' Sirius breathed, too exhausted to be nervous about it now. 'Why didn't you get in with me?' His eyes were closed as he asked it, which made the asking so much easier, even though it meant missing out on any clues Ze's expression might give him. She hadn't answered yet, which made him think she must be thinking, or blushing, or staring in horror – and he was debating whether he should look and see which it was when he got his answer…which happened to be a very faint snore.

This definitely got his eyelids going up, and he looked down at the small ball of warmth collapsed partially against his arm. Ze was a tangle of gangling limbs, twisted half around herself in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable – but which she seemed willing to hold to keep her head resting on his shoulder. That soft, tufty hair was standing off her scalp in a demented parody of a halo, and her mouth was hanging open, revealing a slightly chipped front tooth. To Sirius, she had never looked lovelier. She smells of steak and kidney pie, his common sense reminded him. I don't care, Sirius thought cheerfully – if muzzily – back. Another breath, just a bit too delicate to be termed a snore, escaped her, and she shifted slightly so that she was cuddling his arm. Mine, he thought smugly. Shifting so that Ze was firmly tucked against his side, Sirius dropped his head to rest atop hers, and, content that all was right with his world, went straight off to sleep.

*.*.*

It was an unusually sentimental night in the Gryffindor common room. They might as well have installed a sound effect, the kind that lets out a big soppy "oooohhhh" whenever the hero and heroine kiss, or two fluffy kittens are found asleep in a basket of yarn. Every person who passed the window seat, even the most hard-hearted of cynics (and there is nothing more hard-hearted or cynical than a thirteen year old), paused for a moment and smiled at the sweetness of it. As the evening wore on Sirius and Ze shifted until they were stretched across the length of the cushions, blissfully wrapped up in one another. When Serena passed by on her way up to bed their feet were tangled together, and Ze's face was buried in the crook of Sirius's shoulder. Lily stalked by a few minutes later and stopped dead when she saw that Sirius was hugging Ze protectively to his chest, one hand slid beneath the fabric of her shirt to rest at the small of her back. In seconds Lily was pounding up the stairs for her camera - and, in a fit of kindness, a blanket as well.

The rest of the common room looked on in amusement as Lily immortalised the moment with two quick snaps of film. Ze shifted restlessly at the sudden flash of light, but Sirius pulled her in closer and they both quietened as Ze's arm snaked around his waist, his face burrowing into her hair. 'That's disgusting,' Dorcas sighed, coming to a stop beside Lily.

'Yeah,' Lily agreed fondly. 'But it's great blackmail material.'

Dorcas's eyebrows darted upward at this. 'You think it's going to take blackmail to get them together?'

'No, but I find threats can be very helpful,' the redhead replied with a smile as she tucked her camera into a pocket. 'And we'll need something cheeky for their wedding album.'

'Aren't prefects supposed to put a stop to any inappropriate behaviour?' a fourth year girl asked in carrying tones, glaring jealously at the way Ze's hand was tucked against Sirius's chest.

The look Lily turned on her would have done Queen Victoria proud. 'Sleeping is hardly "inappropriate",' she said with precision-cut menace. 'Causing a disruption or disturbing fellow students, however, can earn you a detention. You haven't got any plans for Friday night, have you?'

The girl backed away with a hasty "no" and the rest of Gryffindor house meekly went back to its business – much more quietly than before. 'D'you think they'll stay down here all night?' Dorcas asked as she and Lily took a few steps away from the slumbering pair.

Lily darted a smile over her shoulder. 'They're out 'til morning at least,' she said happily. 'Which means that Ze's making more progress than I thought.'

Dorcas regarded Lily shrewdly for a moment, and then nodded in that slow, dangerously knowing way only Dorcas had. 'Right, well, I've got a letter to write – come find me if you decide to arrange weddings for anyone else we know.'

'Of course,' Lily replied absently. 'I'll need you to do the seating charts.'

*.*.*

Before Ze was aware of being awake, she was aware of being warm and faintly squashed and incredibly, unreasonably happy. And then she took a deep breath, and caught the smell of Sirius, and felt her toes curling and her mouth smiling and she remembered that she'd fallen asleep on the window seat beside him. Alright, so now it felt like she was partially under him, but there was something comforting about the weight pushing her down into the cushions…or maybe it was just the fact that she couldn't feel her right leg. Still, she thought sleepily, this was brilliant. Somehow Sirius's face was buried in her hair, and she could feel him breathing, each exhalation gently stirring the strands just above her ear. The weight across her stomach must be one of his arms, curled completely around her to keep her from tumbling off the rather narrow bench – chivalrous even in sleep. He really was perfect.

Yes – he's squashing the air out of you – definitely perfect. You've gone completely mad, sighed one of the more sensible voices in the back of her head.

Ze found she didn't really care. She had a hazy idea that she should probably get up and go to bed before they got told off for "inappropriate behaviour", but her body didn't seem interested in listening at all. Which probably meant that any minute now someone was going to clear their throat with a proper ah – HEM and a snide little comment. The strange thing was, Ze couldn't hear the faint buzz that always filled the common room. No one was giggling by the fire, or shuffling parchment, or scribbling hastily away at their homework. In fact, her groggy brain began to realise, the room was eerily silent. Thought processes speeding up in direct proportion to her growing confusion, one of Ze's eyes cracked open to focus blearily on the mountainous range of Sirius's shoulder. A few blinks later, she was able to look past the dark wool of his jumper and take in the view out the window directly above them. Rather than the pitch black of night she had been expecting though, she was greeted by the pearly chill of dawn.

This had both eyes popping open. Her range of motion was limited by Sirius, who was sprawled comfortably over the right side of her body, but the narrow swathe of common room she was able to take in was completely deserted. And, given the faint streaks of gold and pink lighting up the sky above her, it was no mystery why. It's got to be half-six at least. You and Sirius have been cuddled down here all night, and everyone just left you to wake up together in the morning. To her amazement, Ze wasn't embarrassed or worried or upset – she was happy. The fizzy, giggly sort of happy that makes you smile to yourself – and, if you happen to be sharing a settee with someone, stretch just a little and cuddle closer. It wouldn't be long before the rest of the tower was stirring, but given that someone had seen fit to drape a blanket over them, Ze didn't see the point in rushing upstairs to avoid being caught out.

Instead, she resituated herself against the cushions and decided that if Sirius needed any verbal hints that she was absolutely mad for him after this, then he wasn't nearly as clever as he pretended to be. She was just debating whether kissing him awake was really a safety issue as she didn't have a terrarium handy, when she caught a flutter of movement out of the corner of her eye. At first she thought Sirius might be stirring, but quickly she realised that it was just a bird – a plump, cheerful little bluebird, perching on the windowsill. Ze smiled slightly at it – with it's brilliant feathers and puffy little body, it looked straight out of a Disney film – and it looked back with tilted-head, avian curiosity. After a moment it twittered brightly at her, flitting it's tail feathers and hopping a few steps down the sill.

Ze was just beginning to remember that bluebirds typically hung around in the spring when a second – equally plump and alarmingly cheerful – bird joined the first. Now the tweeting was a duet, and the two birds were hopping happily just on the other side of the windowpane. Okay, Ze thought, just a bit weird… And then a third bird, this one larger and bluer and far more alarming, dive-bombed the sill to land drunkenly between the two birds already present. It let out a faintly raucous squawk, almost as if clearing its throat or finding its pitch, and then it joined in the chorus of tweeting and twittering. I'm dreaming, Ze told herself dizzily. It was a perfectly nice dream up until now, being all cosy with Sirius and thinking he fancies me. But since it's turning into The Birds I should probably wake up –

'Good morning!' the birds on the window ledge sang in perfect harmony.

'Aaaaghhhhh!' Ze was screaming and tumbling off the window seat before she'd even registered that she was moving. 'Bloody hell –' she shouted as her right leg – suddenly full of a thousand pins and needles as proper circulation began again – gave out beneath her. 'Wake up,' she ordered herself, slapping her own cheek with her left hand. 'Wake up!'

'Ze?' Sirius was saying wildly, having sat straight up at the disturbance. 'What the – what's going on?' he demanded trying to scramble upright and getting hopelessly tangled in the blanket.

'That bird – bloody – dreaming,' Ze was saying incoherently, shaking her head as Sirius stared on in complete perplexity. 'I'm dreaming,' she repeated forcefully, attempting to convince herself to wake up. 'Come on brain –'

'What is going on?' a third voice demanded, and both Sirius and Ze jerked around to see Lily Evans, enswathed in a dressing gown and staring out from beneath a mop of dishevelled hair, standing at the base of the girls' stairs. 'You haven't had a row, have you?' she asked suspiciously.

'I am dreaming,' Ze announced with utmost conviction. There was a moment of silence as Sirius ceased attempting to disentangle himself and joined Lily in staring confusedly at Ze. 'Aren't I?' Ze asked, somewhat less assured.

Lily shook her head as if to clear it. 'What was all the shouting about?'

'The birds!' Ze immediately said. 'The birds on the window talked to me!'

Everyone's gaze immediately darted to the window: nary a bird in sight.

'Uuhhh,' Sirius said slowly.

Ze was swallowing rapidly, shaking her head. 'Why can't I wake up?' she was asking the air. 'I can always wake myself up once I've realised I'm dreaming – '

'Ze,' Lily said gently, 'you aren't dreaming –'

'Oh, let's hope she is,' Sirius mumbled. So far it hadn't been a good morning. He'd been sound asleep in the arms of the girl he fancied, and before he could do anything about it, she'd completely lost her mind and gone off screaming about talking birds. Why did he always pick the mental ones?

No – wait – that wasn't fair – that was just the sexual frustration talking. The real Sirius – the one who would be running the show if any of the blood was circulating to his brain – wanted Ze to be dreaming so that he could still be sleeping soundly beside her. The real Sirius wanted to be on his feet and rushing over to make sure Ze was alright…he just happened to be too much of a gentleman to make the necessary adjustments in front of Lily.

Lily was now shooting the stationary Sirius a very nasty look indeed and crouching down on the floor in front of Ze, who couldn't seem to get her right leg to work well enough to stand. 'You probably just dreamed that the birds were talking,' she was saying soothingly. 'I do that all the time - wake up and think I'm still dreaming, I mean.' Ze was now pinching the bridge of her nose and nodding slowly. Lily turned her head to glower at Sirius, who was still sitting with the blanket wadded up on his lap. 'A little help?' she suggested scathingly.

Before he had to royally embarrass himself, Sirius was saved by his best mate. 'What's happened?' James cried, pounding down the stairs in a blur of limbs, trying to put his glasses on the wrong way out as he skidded to a halt. 'Who's shouting?'

'Running late as usual Po –' Lily began, only to stop dead halfway through turning to face him.

'Yes?' James prompted, too used to her insults to mind anymore, but decidedly confused that she'd just stopped mid-jibe.

But Lily didn't seem to notice – she'd simply stopped talking with her mouth hanging open, all of her breath going out on something that might have been a gasp. It took both Ze and Sirius a moment to work out why, but as soon as they did, both of them were doing their best to hide their smirks.

James hadn't bothered with a dressing gown. Sirius had dim recollections of a stripey one from second year, but it had long since been used as a makeshift blast shield. Like the rest of the boys' seventh, James slept in his shorts –for modesty's sake, he had jerked a pair of jeans on over them before thundering down the stairs, but he hadn't bothered with the button or the zip. Ze had a brief moment of feeling she was stuck in a horrible parody of a romantic comedy, but quickly put the scenario down to fate. Honestly – it was bound to have happened sometime. James was stood in front of Lily, his hair a complete disaster, his glasses sitting crooked on his nose, still faintly tan from the summer and alarmingly shirtless. And, Sirius could manfully admit, his best friend was quite fit.

Lily had definitely noticed; her eyes were glued somewhere well below James's face and there was a faint flush heating her cheeks. 'Uhhhh,' she said blankly.

'Are you alright?' James was asking solicitously, kneeling in front of Lily and hesitantly reaching out – giving her plenty of time to swipe his hand away if she didn't want to be touched. Sirius, taking advantage of the momentary distraction, sorted himself out and abandoned his perch for his rightful spot beside Ze.

'Convinced you're awake yet?' he asked as he made to kneel beside her.

Unfortunately, his words broke the spell cast by James's rippling muscles, and Lily's head snapped back around to Ze, her cheeks high with colour. 'I've got it under control Potter,' she snapped – or, tried to snap. It would have been a lot more convincing if her voice hadn't squeaked. 'No assistance needed.'

Sirius winced as James's shoulders slumped, his expression morphing from burgeoning hope to crestfallen in a moment. James offered a rueful shrug in response to Sirius's visible worry, and slid his hands into his pockets. 'You okay Ze?' he asked quietly, and earned yet another commiserating look, this one from his female chaser.

'Yeah – weird dreams. Sorry to have got you out of bed for nothing,' she added apologetically.

James's eyes darted to Lily, who was frowning darkly at her hands, and Ze could practically hear him thinking, wasn't for nothing… 'Not a problem,' was all he said aloud.

Lily hadn't moved, despite the fact that she was purportedly seeing how Ze was, and there was a nervous moment of silence as everyone waited for the redhead to either tell James off or make a show of ignoring him completely. These were, after all, her fail-safe measures when in the presence of an unwanted Potter. But Lily said – and did – nothing. Sirius glanced up to analyse James's response to this, and found his friend again looking hopeful – this time almost breathlessly so. And then Ze's hand darted out and squeezed Sirius's fingers. The touch was fleeting, over before he'd managed to whip his head back around, and suddenly she was clearing her throat and saying, 'if we hurry we can get showers before anyone else has a go at the hot water. Couldn't help me up, could you Lily – my leg's completely asleep.'

Sirius's mouth quirked as he realised she'd been apologising for deserting him with that quick touch, and – talking birds completely forgotten – reached out to help lift her to her feet. Lily had got there before him though, and was practically heaving Ze over her shoulder in her haste to get up the stairs. The redhead was so intent on escaping that she didn't even bother to sneer at James or Sirius – she just made a dash for the exit. 'See you at breakfast?' Sirius called after Ze, who was limping in Lily's wake as quickly as she could.

She turned to pull a face at him over her shoulder, indicating Lily with a jerk of her hand. 'Talk in class?' she mouthed at him, and he nodded, smiling. Then she was gone, obscured by the turn in the staircase, and Sirius was left sighing happily…until James cleared his throat.

'What?' Sirius asked, turning to his friend and putting on his best innocent face.

'Don't "what?" me,' James sneered. 'I invented that trick.'

'Yeah, well, I perfected it,' Sirius shot back. 'And I'm not the reason she was shouting. At least, I don't think I am – she had a weird dream or something.' When James merely shot him a sceptical look, Sirius decided more drastic diversion tactics were needed. 'What's with you and Lily, anyway?'

'I'm wearing her down slowly,' was the pious – and thankfully diverted - reply.

'Oh, so that's your strategy. Let me guess – we're six months along in a ten year plan?'

'One night in the arms of the woman you love, and suddenly you know everything,' came the snide riposte. Sounding marginally less surly, James added: 'Still, congratulations – I thought you'd both be too knackered to even speak, and you manage to make your move in public. Peter's already voting we make you do that nude calendar your fan club's been petitioning for.' He was practically chuckling now, and Sirius felt a spurt of alarm.

'What? I'm not posing for anything – those girls are –'

'You will if that's what we decide your punishment is for losing the bet,' James chortled, eyes sparkling.

'But I haven't lost the bet!' Sirius cried wildly.

'Course you ha –' suddenly James broke off, looking much more shrewd as he took in Sirius's frankly desperate state. 'Haven't you?'

'No,' Sirius said, shaking his head, which was suddenly haunted by visions of being mobbed by creepy fifth years clutching cameras and tearing at his clothes. 'No, I swear – I mean, I would've – if she hadn't thought birds were talking to her, you probably would've come downstairs to a free sex-education class. But I didn't. We didn't,' he amended, all but shuddering now.

'But you will,' James said, crossing his arms, knowing that the shakes were in response to much more than the threat of fan girls. 'You're going to.'

'Well of course I'm going to,' Sirius said, running his hands through this hair. 'Just – you know – as soon as you promise you aren't going to make me –'

'You haven't got a choice about what we make you do,' James reminded him. 'You know that.'

'How do you know it's me that's going to lose first?' Sirius demanded. 'Pete's already out, so he hasn't got any say – and the way you're perving on Lily, it wouldn't surprise me if you go the same way before the day's over!'

James lifted his chin and attempted to look virtuous. 'I have more self-control than that.'

'No you haven't,' Sirius said impatiently. 'You just have a more highly developed masochistic streak than the rest of us. And no wonder – if she freezes up like that just 'cos your shirt's off, imagine what'll happen if you ever lose your trousers!'

'Yeah, well at least I'd have got a snog out of cuddling all night,' James shot back, the air thick with tension. He'd just had a moment of blind hope that Lily might fall in love with his body, if not the rest of him, in which case he might have a little more leverage in persuading her…not to mention the chance to confirm certain hopeful rumours he'd heard about her underwear. And then Sirius came stomping in, crushing all James's hopes with the metaphysical equivalent of hobnail boots. Because if that was the way Lily reacted to seeing him exposed, then any future relationship would see him suffering an embolism whilst waiting for her to get her hand busy.

James was so lost in pining over his slaughtered fantasies that he forgot all about the similarly-frustrated body fidgeting in front of him. 'You know, I was really happy about last night until you showed up and opened your gob,' Sirius said into the silence, and James came to just in time to be thankful the heat had gone out of Sirius, rendering his statement more casual comment than insult.

'Sorry mate,' James sighed, burying his hands in his hair to ward off thoughts of Lily. 'You should be happy – the way she was looking when she went up the stairs, I'm guessing you'll be out before lunch. And I hear you looked very sweet last night.'

Sirius felt his cheeks heat as he realised just how many people must have seen him and Ze. 'Shut it,' he mumbled, but couldn't be angry about it.

'Look, forget about it, okay? Just stick to the Plan,' James said bracingly.

'Plan?' Sirius repeated, bewildered. 'What Plan?'

James sighed at this sad showing of strategery in his once-faithful general. 'The one where you let her come to the realisation she's completely in love with you all on her own, allow her to express her affection in any way she pleases – well, hopefully nothing too kinky – and then accept your punishment as having lost the bet, but won the girl. Remember?'

'Oooh – that Plan.' Sirius nodded. 'Yeah, I can do that. Just as long as it doesn't involve my being bollock naked anywhere near a camera.'

James, deciding that modesty was as decidedly overrated in others as it was in himself, gave up and glanced toward the window. A surprisingly bright sky greeted him, and with a start he realised that he could hear more than the girls' seventh stirring. And then another thought struck, and he could feel his stomach sinking as something more important than thoughts of Lily invaded. 'We should probably get dressed and go check on Moony,' he said quietly.

Sirius jumped, suddenly guilty: he had completely forgotten that Remus would be returning to his human form this morning, the matron fetching him up from the Shrieking Shack to look him over in the privacy of the hospital wing. Marauder tradition mandated that his three mates be waiting under the invisibility cloak to greet him with a proper breakfast rather than the "nourishing gruel" Madame Digweed dished out. Good thing Sirius wasn't meeting Ze at breakfast after all – for all the good that did him. Despite the fact that the four boys usually managed to get a laugh or ten out of the experience, these mornings were never the most pleasant of experiences and Sirius had a feeling today was going to be worse than usual – after all, they would have to face questions of precisely what had happened the night of the full moon. 'Think he'll remember much?' Sirius murmured.

'The way our luck's been?' James asked rhetorically, tone edged with irony as he shook his head. 'Pack your bags, Padfoot – we're going on a guilt trip.'

*.*.*

Ze had thought things seemed a little off when Lily didn't shout at James for being half-naked, attractive, and physically present down in the common room. She knew things were off when the head girl tried to walk through the door to their dormitory without opening it first. 'Grasp knob, turn,' she suggested gently from over Lily's shoulder, and instantly regretted her choice of words when her friend's neck and ears flushed a brilliant tomato. 'Er….' she began, wondering how to rectify the situation.

'How's your leg?' Lily asked in a curiously high voice, nearly wrenching the iron fixture off the door in her struggle to open it, which she finally managed to do just as Ze was reaching to help. But Lily was already charging into the room, facing determinedly away from Ze as if hoping to conceal her blush.

'Fine,' Ze hurried to say, hobbling after her and shutting the door as carefully as she could. In reality, her leg was the least of her worries – sure, it was tingling and throbbing as her blood reacquainted itself with the tissue Sirius had so kindly squashed flat, but there were bigger things at stake here. Take, for instance, the fact that Lily was all but panting over James. Ze understood the experience – fit, sweaty boys were one of the greater benefits of her situation – but she hadn't envisioned Lily as being the sort to swoon at the sight of a little chest hair. Which was probably just as well, because James barely had any (despite his claims and subsequent – disastrous - potions experiments). Still, Ze couldn't quite understand Lily going all blushing-maiden because her nemesis came rushing down the stairs with his jeans sliding down – erotically stimulating blue-striped boxer shorts were not.

'Good, good,' Lily was saying, still over-bright and over-quick as she hurried across the room to her wardrobe, flinging the doors open without so much as glancing at her sleeping dorm-mates. 'Um – you'll probably want to meet Sirius for breakfast, yeah? So I'll just –'

'I said I'd see him in class,' Ze interrupted, amusement finally winning out over worry as she watched Lily try to distract herself by digging through her socks. 'We've got loads of time, you know. Anything on your mind, Lils?' she asked teasingly as the redhead chose a pair of thick, woolly boot socks rather than her usual tights.

'No!' Lily cried, immediately before drooping the socks to clap a hand over her mouth, her eyes darting around to see if she'd woken anyone. Miraculously, no one sat up to complain – Dorcas merely mumbled something and hugged her hot-water bottle closer. 'I mean,' Lily continued a moment later, having retrieved both her socks and her composure, 'no, not at all.' And then she promptly slammed her hand in her wardrobe door, which ruined her façade of serenity.

Ze, who had drooped onto her own bed and begun to massage a bit of feeling back into her calf and thigh, hastily turned her head to snigger into her bed curtains. 'Okay,' she finally managed to say. 'If you're sure.'

'Don't you laugh at me, Zenobia Meridian!' Lily snapped, volume going up in proportion to her temper. 'I wasn't the one fondling Sirius Black in the common room in front of everyone!'

'I fondled him?' Ze asked, pushing her eyes wide and feigning shock. 'Really? Why do I always manage to sleep through these things?' she added morosely, managing to hold the expression for a few moments before succumbing to laughter at the look on Lily's face. 'I'd say let's have a proper shouting match, but everyone else is asleep,' she chuckled after a moment. 'So how about you admit you fancy James naked and I'll leave you alone?'

'I do n– ' Lily paused and modulated her voice at Ze's warning look, darted over the sleeping forms around them, her mutinous glare promising future retribution. 'I do not fancy him naked – I don't fancy him any way at all!' she hissed. 'I was just – just surprised.'

'It really is shocking that he keeps that kind of body all buttoned up,' Ze agreed earnestly, a gleam lighting her eye.

'I – agggh! I give up!' Lily said, throwing her hands up. 'You're insufferable – I'm going to have a shower!' she added, storming toward the bathroom.

'Better make it a cold one!' Ze joked after her as Serena's alarm began to trill.

*.*.* /pp

Presumably Lily's shower had been cold – whether by her choice or the torturer's in charge of the water pipes was anyone's guess – because she returned from the bathroom looking as prepared and collected as she always did. It wasn't until Ze spotted her adding Serena's copy of Enchantress! magazine to her school bag in lieu of her potions book that the possibility of a carefully constructed façade was explored. Surreptitiously changing the magazine out for the proper book when Lily's back was turned, Ze decided that maybe there was more going on with Lily than a momentary attack of lust. Not that Ze planned on letting this revelation get in the way of breakfast – after all, she needed sustenance to come up with a plan for wrangling the truth from Lily.

And so, with Serena and Dorcas yawning mightily in their wake, Ze towed Lily towards the Great Hall and the smell of toast. If she happened to spot Sirius on the way there, and he happened to look in the mood for a quick talk about quidditch, current events, and the possibility of their snogging rampantly in some corner before the day was over, well, that was alright too. Or maybe it wasn't. She didn't know – her stomach was full of butterflies and with every minute that passed between waking up beside him and starting the day, Ze found her confidence in the situation between them crumbling. Which was why it was so much easier to worry about Lily: if nothing else, she would start a fight with James, and at least Ze knew what to do about that.

They made it to the Hall without incident, each girl presumably lost in her thoughts (Dorcas mumbling about post timetables), and sat themselves at the Gryffindor table without saying a word. Fifteen minutes later the Hall had begun to fill and Ze was looking for Sirius while trying to eat her toast – somehow she kept getting jam on her ear. weird. – when something collided with the back of Allister's head and sent him face-first into his cereal. Jerking instinctively away from the splatter, Ze looked over to see the enormous bulk of Tubbs, her family owl. Zeke, who was pulling Allister out of his bowl before he could drown in his milk, stared in horror at the flagrantly obese bird.

'Tubbs, how many times have I told you?' Ze was saying, abandoning her toast to reach for the messenger. 'Aim for the people with eggs.' The owl, looking vaguely concussed, hooted apologetically and, briefly wallowing in a platter of bacon, presented its leg for parcel delivery.

'It's not a Howler, is it?' an eager voice asked from further down the table, but Ze couldn't be bothered to sneer.

'Who's it from?' Allister asked, blotting his face with his napkin.

'My mum,' Ze absently replied, giving Tubbs a pat and treating him with a bit of the bacon he'd ruined during his landing. 'Must have forgotten something in her last let–' And then she stopped, her brows darting upward as she got a good look at the contents of the envelope. There was a note from her mother – but it was quite short, the main point of it being "so glad you're still alive, your father's taken up golf, why is Jack using me as a postman?" Because the bulk of the packet was indeed a letter in Jack's familiar, messy hand. 'But I've only just written him,' Ze mumbled to herself, pushing her plate aside and, ignoring her friends – who, as nothing had exploded, were mostly ignoring her – unfolded the letter. It was several sheets of notepaper, the top of which looked even more hastily scrawled than the rest. And, about three lines in, Ze realised why.

There was no salutation or preamble – just straight into: I'd been waiting for your letter to send the rest of this off (beginning to think I might as well drop it into a time capsule, too – maybe you'd reply quicker if we tried communicating by smoke signals?) This earned a wince, but the guilt wasn't strong enough to stop her reading. But something's happened so I'm taking desperate measures. Read the rest of this later – mostly just me whittering about Sophie – but sort this out first! The ink was so thick, and the words underlined so many times, Ze was momentarily afraid Jack was about to confess that he'd caught malaria – or at least VD. And then her darting eyes – already well ahead of her brain – latched on to the next bit. I'm guessing you've had a row with Clive, or he'd be talking to you about it instead of writing me, seeing as I've only met him ten times in my life. Not that I mind – he's nice, knows his sport – but we're not exactly best mates, are we?

I had a letter from him yesterday – really scary stuff. He's dating some girl and apparently none of you like her – he says all his friends (I'm assuming quidditch team as well?) have gone off him since they started going out and he's not sure what to do. Get the impression he hasn't got anyone to talk to really – you, usually, but you're completely furious with him – and he's not sure what to do. So he's writing me for advice 'cos he head I've got a girlfriend. Advice? Me? Ze, having quickly acclimated to Jack's stream-of-conscious epistolary style, found herself eyeing the letter narrowly: so Clive was running to her other best friend now, eh? He says he's really into this Claudia girl, Jack continued, but she sounds absolutely barking mad. Seriously Zed – how'd you let him get involved with a girl like that?

Let him?! Ze thought indignantly. I didn't let him do anything! I'm not his babysitter – he's all grown up and responsible for his own actions. Even if that does mean dating a flaming bitch. Still, she could see Jack's point: Clive needed someone's help - anyone's help. Claudia, bless her, had eaten him alive. From what he says, they spend all their time together – sounds like he studies loads more, all of a sudden – and she's not keen on you lot either. Get the idea Claudia doesn't like you in particular – he didn't say it outright, but the implication's there – haven't told her off for fancying your best friend, have you? No – 'course you haven't – she's just crazy! I'm not joking – and this is why I'm writing – because if everything he's said is true, she's completely, raving mad. I'm not saying I'm an authority on the subject, but she sounds irrational, paranoid, and just plain evil – has she even got any friends? No wonder she latched onto Clive – nice bloke like him wouldn't have a chance!

She's got him completely under her thumb – but the way he writes says he might be willing to do something about - just doesn't want to piss anyone off more than he has. Please, for his sanity – and mine! – go find him and sort it out. And then write me and tell me what the bloody hell's going on. And while you're at it, you could tell me all about this Sirius guy – sounds pretty serious – gerrit? Yeah, glad I'm too far away for you to thump me for that – but WRITE BACK! I don't want to be the only one sounding like a complete arsehole about being in love – don't tell Sophie I said that. Oh, and read the rest of the letter. After you've sorted Clive. And didn't you promise an update on quidditch? We're 1 – 0.

Have to go – let me know about the smoke signals –

For a long moment Ze stared at the letter before her, wondering just what she was supposed to do. Yes, she was guilty of not writing her best friend properly; and yes, she was guilty of not paying Clive as much attention as he deserved – if she hadn't been so wrapped up in her own life, she might have noticed his troubles a bit sooner. But she was at a complete loss as to how she was supposed to fix it. She couldn't just command him to chuck Claudia, could she? And she'd already had an out-and-out with Clive, which had changed virtually nothing that she could see…

But the main thought was: Yeah, 'cos I really needed another thing to worry about. Which was quickly followed by, didn't we just decide to worry about Lily so that we didn't have to worry about ourselves? And all Ze could say to that was, oh, piss off. Thankfully, the bell tolled to send everyone to class, and Ze's body unfolded itself from the table in conditioned response. Beside her, Lily stirred and began to gather herself for class. Ze, lost deep in thought about Clive and Lily and kissing Sirius and how she was going to get out of all of this without giving herself either ulcers or a new pet guppy, absentmindedly herded Lily off the bench and into the aisle.

And Rob, who had been biding his time since the tawny school owl had landed beside his pumpkin juice with its daily offering of a letter addressed to "R", materialised at her elbow. 'Morning Zaz. Anything interesting in the post today?' he asked, tapping the folded parchment cheekily against his palm.

Ze didn't spare him so much as a glance. 'Yeah, sure,' she replied, brain ticking along on a completely different track.

'Fancy me walking you to class?' he offered, not at all bothered by the distracted tone.

'Haven't seen him,' was Ze's complete non-sequiter of an answer. 'See you at lunch,' she added as a space opened in the crowd before her. And, with a nudge to Lily's arm, she was gone.

'Admit it, you're stuffed,' Zeke said from Rob's shoulder.

Seemingly unfazed by the fact that Ze hadn't even been listening to him, Rob gave a jaunty shrug. 'You, Ezekiel, are entirely naïve,' he said without turning, his eyes following her progress toward the door. 'This, my friend, is a dance – I'm just letting her think she's leading.'

Behind him, Zeke rolled his eyes and made a mental note to painfully murder whoever had let Rob in on the secret of metaphors.

*.*.*

Ze had been lucky enough to get a seat by the window in Charms. She hadn't been lucky enough to share it with Sirius – which was entirely his fault, because apparently he hadn't felt the need to show up for class. Lily, who seemed to have found her brains in the bottom of her morning tea, had arched her brows at Ze before taking the empty seat. 'Sirius not showing?' she murmured as she slid onto the bench.

'Probably got his head stuck somewhere unmentionable,' Ze had shrugged in reply, trying to push her worries about Clive to the back of her head.

'Like up Potter's bum,' Lily had murmured back, but without her usual dose of scathe.

So maybe not all of her brain was in the teacup, Ze caught herself thinking. Rather than saying this aloud, Ze just nodded noncommittally. And, as tiny Professor Flitwick began his lecture, she decided that she was actually relieved Sirius hadn't showed. The more time – and, necessarily, space – she had to objectively analyse the situation, the better. So far she'd decided that there was definite, irrefutable, even empirical proof that she fancied him. Now she just had to find the same sort of proof that he fancied her, and she'd be willing to talk about it. Out loud. Possibly even in the same room as Sirius. Maybe.

Because the fact was, the day before had been a complete anomaly – a fluke, a one-off. They'd both been too tired to make any sense, and had ended up collapsed on a settee together. Sure, at the time it had seemed romantic and lovely and completely sweet – but couldn't all of that be down to what Ze herself had wanted to think it was? Wasn't it entirely possible that, while Ze had seen Sirius as being the object of her affections and the only person she'd wanted to be with, Sirius had just seen her as a warm body? And isn't it entirely possible, the snidely sensibly voice in her head said, that you're a whiney twit intent on second-guessing herself into a convent? Whether this rogue nugget of intelligence might have taken hold, finally injecting a bit of sense and entirely restructuring the remainder of this narrative is a complete mystery – because at that exact moment there was a disturbingly audible plop! and Ze looked out the window to see brilliantly-plumed bird perching on the windowsill.

She could only stare in horror. This couldn't be happening. She'd dreamed the birds – they weren't real –

'Tweet tweet!' warbled the happy little bluebird.

'Oh fuck,' breathed Ze.

'Twitter twitter tweet!'

Ze was either seeing double, or there were now two of them. She fervently hoped she was seeing double – at least that meant she'd enjoyed getting proper drunk sometime between breakfast and the present. Of course, the best thing of all would be seeing nothing, so she squeezed her eyes shut and imagined a world without migratory birds. Stuff evolved ecological patterns – she just wanted a moment of sanity. Unfortunately, she opened her eyes just in time to stare down the gaping maw of the third bird's beak.

'Tweeeeeeet!' it shrilled, either finding its pitch or succumbing to the killing curse.

Ze was vaguely aware that Lily, without moving her head, had rotated her eyes to stare out the window. Whether she was looking because Ze was, or because she too could hear the horrifying cacophony issuing from the other side of the pane was a question Ze decided she would worry about later; for the moment, it was enough to know that she wasn't the only one who could see the birds. Because there was no way Lily had missed them: caught on camera, her expression could have made a career of itself. Chin practically scraping the desktop, Lily's head rotated on her neck so quickly Ze half expected something to snap – and maybe something did. But the sound was drowned out by the birds, and this time Ze was sure she wasn't dreaming: they really were forming words.

'Iiiiit puts a spring in your step!' they warbled. 'A riiiing in your bell! You've got that looook on your face - and the whole world can tell – you're in looooooove!'

Despite the fact that Lily's expression was one of total disbelief, she couldn't deny what she was seeing. 'They're…singing….' she mumbled, unable to tear her eyes away.

Ze was just gaping soundlessly, her mouth hanging open as she opened and shut her eyes desperately. Because the birds weren't just singing – all birds sang – these were putting on a bloody routine. Swaying from side to side, bouncing on their little bird feet, tail feathers flitting in time to the beat. 'Allllll over the world – wherever we rooooam – you're the haaaappiest girl – that we've ever knooown! You're in loooooove!'

'Shut up,' Ze was hissing at the glass, making shooing motions. 'Shut up!'

Other students were turning to look now, and Lily's eyes were darting back and forth between the window and the rest of the class. Professor Flitwick still seemed oblivious, despite the fact that the latest chorus of "You're in looooove!" was making it's tinny, off-key way through the room. Several students were peering avidly at the window though, trying to see what was making the noise. And then everybody looked when Ze's voice shouted "Bugger off!", immediately followed by the tinkle of breaking glass.

Professor Flitwick stopped with a particularly operatic squeak, just in time to see a flash of blue tail-feathers in retreat as Ze jerked her hand away from the window. 'Miss Meridian – what is going on?'

Lily could almost see Ze's brain freeze up as her guilt-stricken face rotated from window to tutor as if by command. 'Uuuuuuuhhhh –'

'Birds at the window,' Lily hastened to spit out, knowing the diminutive professor would believe anything she said. 'There were birds just outside the window – we couldn't hear, so she was just…chasing them away.'

A few people were sniggering – they'd heard the song and probably thought it was some sort of joke that Lily was now covering up for – but no one spoke up. 'Is that true Miss Meridian?' Professor Flitwick asked, looking as overbearing as someone who has to wee into an ankle-high loo can.

'Uuuuuhhhh,' was all Ze could get out.

Legendary prevarication powers, what? Lily thought, and instantly grabbed Ze's elbow. 'Oooh – look – think she's cut herself on the glass Professor. Best to get her to hospital – I'll report back to tell you how she is – come on Ze,' she was saying, in fine head girl form. 'Serena, couldn't get her books, could you? Cheers!'

And with that, Ze found herself so handily bundled out of the Charms classroom she didn't even hear Professor Flitwick's concerned goodbye squeak. They were moving rapidly in the direction of the hospital wing, and Lily had dragged her around quite a few corners before Ze could manage to say, 'I haven't cut myself.'

'I know that,' Lily said impatiently, looking from side to side as she towed Ze down the corridor, sails full of wind. 'It's called distraction – thought you were supposed to have a natural gift for it,' she added as she ducked her head around a corner and drew it back at the sight of people. 'Instead you're just sitting there saying "uuuuuhh" like a troll with its club up its – here we are!' she said happily and thrust Ze's compliant form into a small – and empty - niche.

The plaque on the wall, Ze noticed, said that the statue of Dedalus the Deranged had been removed for cleaning and would be returned to view in September of 1706. 'I think I've seen him,' she said absently.

'Who, Flitwick? Of course you've seen him – '

'No, Dedalus,' Ze interrupted. 'He's a hat stand in the Potions dungeon. No?' she asked, when Lily looked both confused and worried. 'Big marble thing with hats on his fingers? S'got to be him. Well, it's definitely a statue, and it's definitely deranged…'

'I'm beginning to think you're deranged,' Lily muttered. 'Ze, what was going on back there – those birds –'

'If you don't mind, I'm trying really hard to block that from my memory and pretend it never happened,' Ze said firmly.

'Yeah, well, that's not an option – an entire room of people saw it, didn't they?' Lily pointed out. When Ze just plugged her fingers into her ears and began to hum, Lily threw up her hands. 'Were they the same birds you saw this morning? Outside the window? When you shouted?'

'HhhhmmmHhhmmHhhhhhhhhhhmmhmhmhm,' Ze buzzed.

'A dream is not a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep,' Lily snapped. 'So stop humming that stupid song!'

Ze removed one finger from her ear. 'If you don't mind, I am trying to revert to my childhood self and have a full-fledged psychotic break.'

'I do mind – you've got birds singing at your window, which means they're going to be singing at my window in the morning, because we share a room. Now stop channelling Cinderella and tell me what is going on!' And just like that, Lily froze. 'Oh,' she whispered after a moment.

Ze, who had given up on going loony for the moment, nodded morosely. 'Yeah. Oh,' she agreed.

'But – but – '

'But faerie tales,' Ze sighed. 'You think they're all true love and happy little songbirds – and when it turns out they actually are, you start to realise why they're the forerunners of the modern horror film.'

'They were singing,' said a horrified Lily.

'Yes – birds generally do.'

'Will you stop being the long-suffering comedic relief and explain?' Lily snapped impatiently.

'Explain what?' Ze shot back. 'They're the birds of the air – look on the bright side, at least it wasn't the beasts of the forest – and they're following me around because I fancy a boy.' She shook her head, glowering blackly in the general direction of her ancestors. 'If I find out who had it off with an elf, I'm holding a séance and inviting the Ghostbusters.'

'But why are they only chasing you now?' Lily asked doggedly. 'Why not weeks ago, when you started fancying him? Or three days ago, when you admitted it? Why'd they wait until now?'

Ze glanced at her friend, trying to discern if this was affectionate concern, or Lily's dislike of illogic rearing its head. Deciding it was a mixture of both, she shrugged. 'Look, I have no idea, okay? I only just realised what was going on when they started singing in words – and when they buggered off when I said bugger off.'

'Ze, you broke a window in front of them,' Lily pointed out, not wanting things to get too far-fetched.

'Yes, but they're supposed to obey the commands of my voice or something, aren't they?' Ze said triumphantly. And then she remembered that they'd ignored pretty much every verbal command. 'Except, you know, they didn't really…'

'No, they didn't,' Lily agreed, wondering if Ze was going to have to break a window every time she wanted to scare off the wildlife. 'And I don't think they're going to start.'

'You think they'll be back?' Ze's head jerked up, expression horrified.

'Do you still fancy Sirius?'

'Well, yeah, but –'

'But nothing – they'll be back. So you'll have to be ready.'

'With what, a crossbow?'

'Sarcasm is not a solution,' Lily said primly.

'No,' Ze grumbled, 'but it makes me feel better.'

'You need to work on your verbal commands,' Lily continued.

'Think I should step it up to "fuck off"?' Ze asked innocently.

'I think you should listen to your gut, shove Sirius up against a wall somewhere, and have your naughty way with him,' was the equally disingenuous reply. 'But that's just a suggestion…'

Ze's hands went raking across her face and through her hair of their own accord. 'How would you like it if I told you doing the same thing with James would help you get your concentration back?' she asked in an attempt to divert attention.

Lily blushed, but held her ground. 'I'm concentrating perfectly well, thank you. And anyway, I'm not the one with a bird infestation and charges of vandalism hanging over my head. You need to get this business between you and Sirius sorted out, Ze,' she added, all flippancy gone from her tone.

'Well it's not that simple, is it?' Ze sighed, dropping back to lean against the wall.

'You keep saying that, and I keep wondering why,' Lily said, a thread of impatience weaving into her voice. 'If you've got a reason for it, explain – otherwise, stop bringing it up.'

'I do have a reason, I just can't – aggggh!' Ze groaned, covering her face with her hands once more. 'Isn't this supposed to be easier?' she asked the cosmos through the gap in her fingers. 'Shouldn't I just think some guy is good-looking, chat him up, and make him my boyfriend? Why is this so hard? Don't you want the human race to continue procreating?' she demanded of the ether.

'Maybe the universe is trying to breed out the talks-to-herself gene,' Lily suggested pertly. The look Ze shot her was purely malevolent, despite being delivered around Ze's littlest finger.

'Look,' Ze began, all seriousness now. 'There is a very good reason - which I cannot explain to you because it is not MY reason, but you should trust me anyway,' she spat out rapidly, 'to believe that Sirius is not currently in complete control of his emotions.' She glared Lily into silence when the redhead made to speak. 'I know that guys are always subject to their hormones – we all are – but right now I think there's a strong chance any interest he has in me is subject to a stronger-than-normal sexual drive, looking to satisfy itself any way it can.'

Lily opened her mouth to give a blistering retort, and then closed it when she realised Ze was absolutely serious. There was pause for deep, meaningful cogitation, and Lily regarded Ze slowly from top to bottom. 'You didn't seem to be plagued by this doubt last night when you were asleep in his bloody arms,' she pointed out shrewdly.

'No, but that was the heat of the moment,' Ze said stubbornly. 'I'm trying to be objective and –'

'And the point is you two couldn't have been stuck any closer together if Spell-o-tape had been involved!' Lily exploded. 'Honestly, Ze, how thick can you get? He fancies you.'

'Then why, every time I'm more than five feet away from him, do I worry that he doesn't?' Ze demanded.

'Because you're an idiot, and you're nervous and you're normal - ' Lily railed, and then, quite suddenly, stopped. 'Today in Charms,' she asked, green eyes snapping, 'were you worrying about whether Sirius really likes you?'

'What?'

'When the birds found you and starting singing about your being in love,' Lily said impatiently. 'Were you thinking about Sirius?'

'Yes, but –'

'But nothing. And you were thinking about him this morning, too, because he was lying on top of you,' Lily was saying, more to herself than Ze now. 'So that means they're manifestations of – '

'You think the birds find me when I'm thinking about Sirius?' Ze said amusedly, even as her scepticism prompted her to shake her head. 'That's impossible –'

'No, I think they find you when you're making a decision about him,' Lily interrupted. 'Let me finish,' she continued when Ze's mouth didn't shut. 'And actually listen to me, okay? Think about it - they appeared at a major turning point in your relationship: the first time you and Sirius were physically close. There you were on the settee, probably thinking about whether it would be a good idea to go further than snogging him yet, and they pop up on the window – scare you right out of your wits and stop you from making a decision you might regret later, right?'

Ze, recalling that she'd been trying to decide whether she ought to kiss Sirius at all, felt that this diagnosis might just fit – even if it meant having to later convince Lily that she hadn't done anything besides lose sensation in a limb whilst on those cushions. 'Yeah…' she said slowly.

'And then there you are in Charms, suddenly struck by panic and indecision and feelings of inadequacy, thinking about how maybe it's all a mistake, and you should just get out now, and they show up again,' Lily said, triumphant now. 'Only this time they're singing about how happy you are to be in love! See – they're speaking up for the bits of you that haven't got voices but know what's right!'

Ze was now staring at her, completely nonplussed. 'You think my conscience is manifesting itself as bluebirds?'

'Yes!'

Ze groaned. 'I'd have preferred a cricket.'

'Why – easier to carry around?'

'No, easier to step on.'

Lily merely arched a brow. 'So you won't be naming them then?'

Ze spared her an unimpressed look and went back to brooding. 'How am I going to get rid of them?'

'I thought kissing Sirius would do it,' Lily mused, 'but maybe you have to confess how you feel?'

Ze was back to looking horrified. 'Confess how I feel? I'd rather snog him, thanks.'

'Yes, but – wait - rather snog him? You mean you haven't?' It was almost a shriek, and Ze's hands clapped reflexively over her ears; this was all the admission of guilt Lily required. 'You were down there with him all night - I went and got you a duvet! And you're saying you didn't have time to kiss him?'

'It hasn't got anything to do with time,' Ze began testily, but Lily wasn't through.

'All of this could be solved with a kiss, Zaz – that's how it always is in stories,' she was saying, almost tearful in her frustration. 'You kiss, all your problems disappear, everyone lives happily ever after!'

'Yes, well, the Brothers Grimm didn't know about Dorcas, did they?'

'No – don't even try it – you are not getting out of this one like that. One kiss,' Lily said, hands on her hips. 'One kiss, and it could all be over. You say you fancy him, but I'm beginning to wonder –'

'I'm scared, okay?' Ze burst out. 'I'm completely, utterly freaked out.' Lily caught the quaver in Ze's voice, and wondered if she was finally about to see the taller girl crack. 'I – look, I really want to kiss him, I do. It's just that…what if I'm rubbish at it? I mean, aside from the fact that Sirius could potentially turn into a – a squid, what if I'm just bad at snogging? It's not like I've done it before, is it? And he has – loads of times – with Grace,' she added bitterly, her voice thrumming. 'I really don't want to be a worse snog than Grace.'

This was one stumbling block Lily hadn't projected a way around. 'Okay…' she said slowly, too lost in thought to notice Ze frowning and rubbing at her throat.. 'First, I don't think you're going to turn Sirius into a squid. Second, Grace wears so much lip-gloss it's probably like kissing a paste jar. Third – er,' she busily wracked her brains, beaming triumphantly at the exact moment Ze gave a dry cough. 'Third, you haven't got any bad habits to un-learn, so you can only get better.' She nodded to herself in satisfaction. 'See – perfect. Oh – and you fancy him rotten, so that's bound to help too.'

Ze opened her mouth to argue, and had a momentary fantasy that her tongue was trying to tie itself into a knot against her will. But then it was moving along just fine, and she said, 'Yeah, that's completely rational – but it doesn't help me very much when it comes to –' she had to break off, clearing her throat to get rid of a persistent tickle. 'Sorry – what I mean is, I can never remember all of that when I'm thinking about kissing –' this time she broke off into a wheezing cough.

'Ze?' Lily asked, but Ze raised one hand to indicate that she was fine, and gave another wheeze or two.

'Just – dust or something,' she said a moment later, and felt a faint jolt as she heard her own voice. 'Sorry, that was –

'You sound sort of funny,' Lily was saying. 'Sort of, I dunno, weird –'

Ze opened her mouth to assure Lily that she was completely fine, but instead of a scoff what came out was, 'I know that I seem craaaazy! I know that I seem maaaddd!'

Lily leapt back about a foot as the full force of a completely unexpected stage soprano blew past her at mach force. 'Oh my god!'

Ze, who was only just getting past the shock and realising she no longer had control over her own vocal chords, was clawing desperately at her throat – but it didn't stop the voice, high and bright and clear, from belting out of her mouth. 'But this is the most wonderful feeeeeling - that anyone has ever haaaaaaaaad! It's loooooooooooooooove! I'm in looooooove!' By this point Ze had given up on strangling herself and managed to slam her jaw shut with both hands. Another few choruses of "I'm in looooove!" bounced around inside of her mouth, jarring her teeth and leaving her sinuses vibrating, but at least the walls weren't ringing anymore.

'Oh shit,' Lily was saying as relative quiet resumed. 'You're turning into Julie Andrews –'

Her heart hammering in her chest, Ze slowly realised that her tongue's guerrilla attack seemed to be over. Not feeling safe enough to completely remove her hands form her face, she slackened the hold on her jaw enough to mumble, 'What the fuck was that?' from behind her shaking fingers.

Lily, who was doing her best to remain calm on the theory that two people loosing their minds at the same time didn't do anyone any good, swallowed and said, 'I think you were…singing.'

'Smmgiigng?' Ze repeated blankly from behind her hands.

'Yeah – you know. Like Mary Poppins.' All the colour drained out of Ze's face at this. Lily gave a tremulous smile, which looked more like a death grimace than any kind of reassurance. 'It sounded nice…you know, in an "any minute now the talking furniture will join in for the chorus" sort of way.'

'Please, no-' Ze began, but the moment her mouth opened she felt her tongue curl against its will, forming words she definitely wasn't thinking for herself. 'It's the pitter-patter of my heaaaaaaart!' she belted out, hands already clawing at her face in an attempt to shut her mouth. 'It's the flitter-flutter of my sooooooul!' Abandoning the fight to get her jaw locked again, she raised one hand and gave herself a vicious slap across the cheek. The song aborted mid-vibrato, and Ze and Lily stared at one another as the echoes faded slowly. 'Oh shit,' Ze tried to whisper, only it came out as "oooooooHHH shiiiiiiiiiit!" But this time she was ready for it, her hands immediately clapping back over her mouth, and she stared at Lily, pleading with her eyes for something to be done.

'Er…a silencing charm?' the redhead suggested after a moment. Ze threw one hand out as if to say "forever!?" 'No, probably not,' Lily sighed. 'Look on the bright side,' she added after a moment, 'you could always have a career in the Royal Opera.'

'I am not singing for the Royal Opera,' Ze snapped, and jumped at the sound of her normal speaking tones. They both froze for a moment, and then Ze gave "I am not completely insane" a vocal test-drive. 'Oh thank Circe,' she whispered as the words faded quite normally into the air.

Lily was shaking her head. 'It's just like the birds – you start talking about Sirius, and your subconscious seeks revenge. On all of us,' she added in a mutter, giving her ringing ears a shake.

Ze's throat constricted. 'You mean every tiiiiiiime-' she began, snapping her mouth closed and pointing her wand at her own face at the first hint of melody.

'Don't push it,' Lily hissed, her own wand whipped out and trained on Ze's mouth. 'Just don't talk at all if you can help it. I can't take any more of that rubbish – no offence,' she added. Ze shrugged, as if to say "s'okay – I don't write my own material." 'Look, I'm sure there's a way we can fix it,' Lily continued, only to be interrupted by the sound of voices echoing from just around the corner – too faintly to tell if they belonged to teachers or fellow students. A glance at her watch confirmed that they didn't have much time before the bell went, and Lily made a quick decision. 'I know you're not keen on explaining this to anyone, but I don't think you want to be performing for the whole school either. We should go to McGonagall –' She broke off mid-persuasion as Ze's head cocked to the left, towards the sound of voices.

Ze shook her head when Lily made to speak again, so Lily joined in the listening in time to register that the voices were both male – and both vaguely familiar. And then, before she could start in on the pleading and death threats, Ze had taken off down the hall. 'Ze!' she shouted furiously, legs automatically giving chase. 'Where are you going?'

'Sirius!' Ze shouted back over her shoulder, already drawing ahead.

'What?'

'I'm not singing for nobody!' was the cryptic answer. And with that, Ze legged it around the corner towards salvation.

*.*.*

'I'll get him his tea – you and Pete get my bag, yeah?' Sirius called to James from the top of the staircase.

James, who was already heading in the opposite direction towards Gryffindor tower, turned back to say, 'Pete's gone to get the stuff – meet us in the Transfiguration corridor?'

'Okay,' Sirius nodded, and had his foot on the first riser when the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps jogged his memory. 'Hang on – James –' he called suddenly, turning back up onto the landing.

But whatever he'd been about to say went completely out of Sirius's head as the feet pounding against stone rounded the corner, and he caught sight of Ze, running at him full tilt. Robes billowing out behind her, skirt flying up with every step, she was sprinting dead for him with a look of steely determination. His first thought was She's going to kill me. His second thought was, Merlin bless whoever invented breasts. And then he realised she was saying something – by the look on her face, something important.

By then James was reappearing in the doorway, and Sirius could see a flash of red hair from behind Ze. Everyone seemed to be talking, and all he could catch from Ze was: 'Wanted to do this properly - hope you don't mind losing that stupid - bloody singing - '

And then she was colliding with him, one hand tangling into his hair, mouth arching up towards his - in his elation - FINALLY - he stumbled one step back to get a proper hold on her, and quite suddenly they were tumbling down the stairs -

A/N

and there's an indecisive heroine, squeaky Flitwick, secret powers run amuck and Lily blushing at partial nudity - what else can we exploit today?

of course, it's also another chapter - full, as usual, of unanswered questions, irrational activity, and out-of-control wildlife. you may also have noticed that i have made it my goal to end every chapter of this story with a cliffhanger (well, except maybe the last one - that would be a bit cruel...)

still, i'm running on the massive rush of having completed exams and essays and will probably go back and trim this down a little - it's long. very long. even by my standards. - but am already writing Chap 35, so hopefully update time will be quicker? Jack is, as you have noticed, back - rest of his letter and Clive drama to be dealt with soon. for now, let's just concentrate on getting to the bottom of the stairs...

thanks so much to all who have been reading and reviewing - as always, questions, opinions, and favourite quotes are welcome.

xxx


	35. The Art of War: Part Un

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 35: The Art of War: Part Un

About halfway down the stairs Ze's nervous system had apologetically rung up her brain and passed on the message: painpainpainpainpainpain. Thus, Ze's first thought on tumbling to a stop at the bottom was: OUCH! Then she had registered the corporeal nature of the object upon which she rested, and her second thought had become: Oh god, I've killed him.

Admittedly, it had been a rather hastily drawn conclusion. What little she'd been able to see of Sirius at the time (a patch of his throat approximately four centimetres square) had been decidedly pale and lifeless, and Ze had experienced one of those head-rushing moments of tunnel vision as the rest of the world politely stepped back to let her get on with the important things. Namely, losing her head completely. While she could admit that it had hardly been one of her more sensible moments, Ze would later maintain that poking Sirius viciously in the shoulder had been a sound – if primitive – medical test. When James asked "what could you possibly have diagnosed by stabbing his clavicle?" Ze's haughty reply was "I needed to be sure he wasn't faking it, didn't I?" What they both knew, but James was kind enough not to bring up, was that it had been the action of a desperate woman. Ze and Sirius had plummeted down the stairs in a flurry of churning limbs, and by the time they crashed to the floor at the bottom their bodies were more mixed up than a pint of sick. In that first breathless moment of fear Sirius's shoulder had been the only bit of him Ze could reach. By the time James and Lily had got to the bottom of the stairs they were sure Ze's complete fluster was the result of Sirius having a bone protruding through flesh somewhere. In reality, she had just untangled herself sufficiently to search for missing appendages, pools of blood and general signs of this officially being The Worst Day Ever.

Ze, who had been rather desperately chanting Sirius's name over and over as she patted every bit of him she could reach, didn't so much as look up until Lily had put a hand on her shoulder. Then her gaze, wild and terrified, had jerked to Lily's face as an odd, flat, very un-Ze-like voice said, 'I've killed him.'

'Relax,' James had soothed. 'I do it all the time.'

That had been half an hour ago, and while Ze now had the comfort of knowing that she had not, in fact, accidentally done Sirius in with a staircase, she was facing the sad realisation that she might be the first girl in the history of the world to cause critical head trauma in her quest to snog someone. Because really, she thought bitterly, my romantic self-esteem needed another stab to the heart. Unaware that James and Lily were keeping a concerned eye on her from the brutally uncomfortable chairs of the hospital wing waiting area, Ze paced frantically across the width of the room, hands twitching as she muttered to herself.

'D'you think we should see if she wants to talk about it?' James whispered to Lily, his eyes following Ze as she paced at dizzying speed.

'You go on if you like,' Lily said slowly, her own gaze fastened onto Ze's furiously clenching hands. 'I'm not getting within arm's-reach until she's capable of some response besides manual strangulation.'

Ze, had she not been too engrossed in her own form of self-flagellation to hear the comment, might have reassured Lily that, despite appearances, she wasn't in a murderous rage. It was much, much worse than that. A murderous rage was a problem with a solution – a violent, dangerous, why-didn't-I-remember- blood-stains-are-impossible-to-wash-out? solution, but a solution nonetheless. She would have killed to be in a murderous rage…which possibly explains quite a lot. Because the simple fact was that Zenobia Meridian was falling to pieces – and it wasn't a pretty sight. Serena, who had emotionally disintegrated at least twice a month for most of their years at school, always managed to make it look good – all glittering tears and strategically streaked mascara. On the rare occasions Lily shattered, her brilliant colouring just seemed to grow more dramatic, gorgeous green eyes lamping out above tragically pale cheeks. Even Dorcas managed to work the angst, lower lip quivering pitifully in an otherwise stoic face, the epitome of repressed anguish brought on by a too-cruel world. Ze, it seemed, just tore her hair out.

Well, not literally – not yet. But she would happily consider it if this pacing stuff didn't work out – and she was only giving that another thirty seconds before she moved on to a new tactic. It was an investigative process, really, this attempting to find her niche, her own special place in the world of the temporarily neurotic. The problem was that Ze had never really had cause to explore the various holiday packages that offered express service to Insanity-by-the-Sea. She had always been rather even-tempered and easy-going, the sort of person who considered stress a spectator sport. That was, of course, before her life had been overrun by the trivial, the bizarre and the downright appalling. Suddenly she was considering an all-inclusive five-night stay with full breakfast and complimentary schizophrenia.

Because, Ze felt, she was completely within her rights to go barking mad. She felt as if the Gordian Knot had been tied off in her shoulder muscles and she had a sneaking suspicion she was developing stressed induced asthma. And all because the past month of her life had contained more falls from grace than a Victorian morality tale. The stress had just built on itself and built on itself and suddenly here she was, tumbling down staircases, chock full of gut-gnawing inadequacy issues and living in perpetual fear of further public humiliation.

And she had bloody well had enough.

It was time to stop faffing about, crying 'poor me' and letting this get the best of her. She was a creature of action, damn it, and the time to hesitate was through! The trouble was, she had tried to stop hesitating– albeit in a rather spontaneous and poorly planned way – and all she'd ended up with was a mild concussion and a mouthful of Sirius's jumper. Madame Digweed had taken care of the first, but Ze could definitely still taste the second. And it was this lingering hint of washing powder and wool that had her asking one very important question:

This thing with Sirius was supposed to work out, wasn't it?

After all, she did have all the symptoms – racing of the pulse, fluttering in the stomach, soundtrack by creepy birds singing with human voices – this had to be love…didn't it? And if it wasn't love, then what the bloody hell was it? Bubonic plague, her id suggested in a tone as vilely bitter as railway tar. It was a testament to the sad state of her mental affairs that Ze actually considered this for a moment. But then, putting aside the possibility of plague, she delved back into reality and tried to recreate the moment – wasn't that what you were supposed to do whenever you tried to remember something you'd forgot?

About three seconds into the automatic replay, Ze began wishing that things were a bit fuzzy – or, better yet, that she'd been struck with complete amnesia. She remembered the birds. And the singing. She could even recreate the exact moment she had decided she would rather throw herself at Sirius like a shameless hussy than serenade him with her love. She just had no idea how she'd known where he was. The logical interpretation would be that she'd recognised his voice echoing up the stairwell. Or maybe it had just been blind hope. Perhaps psychic abilities were part of the World's Most Masochistic Secret Powers Package™ – although somehow this seemed too good to be true, seeing as telepathy was in no way related to the Assorted Wildlife option that seemed to have been ticked on Ze's request form. At the time she had just assumed that the universe was finally doing something nice for her by sending him her way, because in that moment kissing Sirius had been more essential than oxygen.

That was how she had found herself sprinting for the staircases, only one thought in her head. Aware that Lily was still panting after her, Ze had rounded the corner and felt her heart try to skip a beat or whatever it was supposed to do at the sight of Sirius, because there he had been, calling something after James from the top of a staircase. He had seemed to feel the magnetic pull of her presence – or maybe that was just the sound of Lily's asthmatic wheezing getting his attention – because he had stopped mid-sentence and turned to look in her direction. It was from this point on that things got a bit blurry. Ze had been running full tilt, blathering senselessly about the injustice of it all, and could imagine she'd looked more than slightly mad. And then-

Well, and then she'd thrown Sirius down the stairs. Ooops.

But had she kissed him? No. She knew the answer to that one; was beginning to believe that she might have said answer carved into her epitaph: Here Lies Zenobia Meridian, Snog Failure and Social Muppet. Perhaps it would have been better if she'd broken her neck on the way down the stairs – death would have been better than bludgeoning Sirius's head in and munching on his jumper. Actually –

'Ze?' Ze nearly leapt out of her skin as a hand landed hesitantly on her shoulder. 'Hey,' Lily said softly, eyes wary as she looked Ze over. 'The nurse's just come out – Sirius is fine, but she's going to keep him for a bit to let him get some rest.'

'He's not dead?' Ze blurted out.

Did Lily's lips just twitch? Evil, evil girl… 'No,' the redhead replied, 'he's not dead. Digweed is kicking us out though, says she's not letting us sit in here just so we can get away with bunking off. Potter went to pop his head in at Black before we left,' she added, gesturing to the maze of white curtains obscuring the cots at the end of the ward. 'Do you want to –'

'No,' Ze said immediately. 'No, it's fine, better to let him sleep.'

If Lily thought this smacked of cowardice rather than kindness she was too polite to say so. Instead, she took a few steps in the direction of Sirius's curtained-off bed and called, 'Oi, Potter, let's go!' There was a pause, followed by a faint rustling sound, but no verbal reply. 'Potter,' Lily called again, sounding on the displeased end of puzzled.

And then James emerged from the maze of drapery a good bit to the left of where Sirius lay. 'Yeah, sorry, got a bit lost in the curtains,' he said with an apologetic smile. 'You ready then?'

Lily's only response was to roll her eyes and turn back to Ze, who was now standing with her hands shoved into her pockets, starting balefully at the floor. With a meaningful jerk of her head in Ze's direction Lily ordered James to behave himself or else, and led the way to the doors. As they exited, James, never one for awkward silences, smiled at Ze and said, 'So you're all sorted out then? Fit for quidditch?'

'Potter, this is hardly the time,' Lily began, but she was interrupted by Ze, whose head snapped up immediately.

'I'm always fit for quidditch.'

James flashed Lily a superior smirk and turned back to Ze…only to find that she was already stalking away. 'G…ood,' he managed, his prepared answer suddenly useless. 'See you on the….pitch?' he trailed off. With a huff of exasperation Lily started after Ze, only to find herself restrained by a hand on her arm. Turning her head to make a death threat, she found that James was still staring after Ze. With a slow shake of his head he said, 'Not right now Evans. Not right now.'

*.*.*

'Yeah, sorry, got a bit lost in the curtains,' Remus heard James say sheepishly. 'You ready then?'

There was a murmur of assent, and then the sound of three pairs of footsteps shuffling towards the doors. Remus could almost see James glancing back over his shoulder, first at the hangings obscuring Sirius's bed, and then at those surrounding Remus. His expression would be the one a Marauder always wore when leaving the hospital wing: worry over those he left there, with a determined gleam in the eye that said he was coming back soon.

It was, Remus had long ago decided, the most welcome expression in the world. Not that he could ever tell James or the others that – not ever before, and certainly not after this morning. Should he ever try, they would all blush and shuffle their feet and hurry to be the first to change the subject. It was so much easier, when he was confined to his little quarantine space, to let the topic run to whatever adventure they'd had on the full moon, or to what Remus had missed in lessons. And, on those occasions when disaster had been too closely courted for them to laugh, even with the sun up, there was the comfort of sitting together in the silent knowledge that they still hadn't been caught…

This morning the silence had been almost tangible in its weight. They had been past quiet jokes and even the restorative powers of tea – and Remus had decided he was tired of going round the houses. He had waited until they were all settled, leaning in poses of practised nonchalance around the bed, very determinedly not thinking about Tuesday night. 'I know who it was,' he'd said flatly, and watched as Sirius and James had flinched in the dim light, guilt sliding into their eyes just behind that flicker of fear. It was a confirmation of the things he'd half-remembered, and it had soured his stomach with fear. 'We're not doing it again.'

Peter, completely confused, had darted his eyes back and forth between them all. 'Did I miss something?' he'd asked, curiosity overridden by nerves. 'Because I feel like I've missed something.'

It had gone from there, the kind of row that's a symphony of whispers, too furious even for shouting. It ended – or, rather, was aborted when Madame Digweed swept back the curtains, expecting to find her patient alone. The matron had been so surprised to find them so quiet – and so obviously in disagreement - that she hadn't even threatened dismemberment as she booted the three non-patients out of her domain, leaving Remus to stare sightlessly at the ceiling as he listened to his friends' footsteps snapping against the stones. Their fury was nearly tactile, hanging in the air around him, echoed by the staccato rhythm of their retreating steps. It always ended like this – their anger and his resolution - and, somehow, they always found a way around it. But not this time, Remus had promised himself. This time it had gone too far.

His promise had lasted all of an hour before James was back, sliding between the curtains wearing a half-smile. 'You still being a drama queen?' he'd asked, jokingly.

Remus, who had been dozing fitfully only to be woken by Sirius's raucous arrival, had been preparing for James's visit since the moment he woke up. He'd settled on his pose, and his response had been to stare resolutely at his hands as he asked, 'How did Sirius crack his head this time?'

There had been a pause, and Remus could practically hear James getting angry again. 'Ze,' had been the eventual, succinct reply. 'Knocked him down the stairs. By accident,' he'd added, as though this needed to be said – as though Ze and Sirius were anything like James and Lily.

'He alright?'

'Oh yeah,' James had said with mock ease. 'Well, except for that touch of lycanthropy he's picked up – funny how that stuff's going round.'

Things had gone downhill from there. Rapidly. They were just getting to the stage where forgiveness might not be possible (there had been mention of mothers) when salvation had come in the form of Lily's strident tones. 'Oi, Potter, let's go!'

James had shot a frustrated glare through the curtains before he'd turned back to Remus and, whispering furiously, promised: 'This isn't over.'

And then he had slipped through the curtains just as Lily shouted 'Potter!' again, leaving Remus with a worse headache than he'd had before.

Can't it ever just be easy? the young werewolf asked himself morosely. But he knew the answer to that; his life was a study in the answer to that. And so, determined not to think about it, not until he had to, Remus pushed it all away and ordered himself to go to sleep. It wasn't difficult: he could always sleep the days after the full moon, if he wasn't too busy being a thin-skinned, irritable bastard. Promising that he would visit Sirius as soon as he woke up again, Remus lapsed into a doze which was becoming real sleep just as he heard the hospital door creak open again. If that's bloody Potter, his brain groused sleepily.

But Madame Digweed was already dealing with it, and Remus was almost completely under as he heard her say, 'If you're after Miss Evans and that Meridian girl, they've already gone.' When the reply was too high-pitched to belong to James, Remus gave up on consciousness and fell back into sleep. Which was really a pity, because a few moments later footsteps tiptoed across the room and a body slid between the curtains surrounding his bed. The matron had returned to her office, so she didn't notice that the visitor hadn't gone to see Sirius Black after all – but then that had been the visitor's plan.

Serena stood at the foot of Remus's bed, arms folded, and watched him sleep. If Remus had had any idea she was there he probably would have been clutching the sheets to his chin like some shy maiden in one of her novels. As it was, she had a lovely view of his starchy, hospital-issue pyjamas and the way his mouth hung open slightly as he snored. Most people wouldn't have considered it a particularly attractive sight, but it seemed to suit Serena just fine; she made no move to wake him, just watched him with a contemplative little gleam in her eye. If she was planning anything she certainly didn't mention it – but when she left the hospital ward ten minutes later, she was smiling rather secretly to herself.

*.*.*

Ze did not, as Lily suspected, spend lunch brooding. She spent lunch making a plan – something she had never really done before, and something she sincerely hoped she never had to do again. Well, at least not until she had to get a job. Planning was something best left to the Lilys and Dorcases of the world, people with a healthy respect for data entry and a good eye for pie-charting. Ze's approach was a tad more…brutal:

I. Find Sirius

II. Kiss Sirius

III. Hunt down and murder the Powers That Be if Sirius turns into a frog

IV. Kiss Sirius some more

It was never going to win any awards for finesse, but she was confident it would do the job. And it was time – past time, really, when she considered how much time she'd wasted sulking and whining and being a proper tit. But all that ended now. The moment she got out of quidditch training she was making straight for the common room, hunting him down, and getting it over with. Alright, maybe she'd stop by the kitchens for a fortifying tipple at the cooking sherry first, but definitely after that. Sirius was never going to know what hit him. Well, he'd probably at least be able to make an educated guess, because it was always Ze who hit him, but…

A flash of blue in the corner of her eye caught Ze's attention, and her head whipped around as she stared at the trio of obnoxiously cheerful, dangerously obese birds that had fluttered down to perch on the courtyard wall. As she watched they flitted their tails and settled in, and before she even knew what she was doing her fingers were running along the ledge behind her. The first bird was just beginning its vocal warm-ups when her fingertips found what they were looking for. So you want me to show my true feelings, eh?

At the first hint of a two-tweet harmony, Ze's arm cocked back and let the pebble fly. There came a dull thump and a few indignant squawks, followed by a flurry of departing wings. Ze smiled slowly as a single blue feather drifted to the ground. And they said violence wasn't the answer…

*.*.*.*.*

Sirius's first thought on awakening was that he really needed a toilet. His second thought was that he really needed to be at the quidditch pitch, because it was definitely past four. Neither of these was helped by the fact that he was confined to a bed in the hospital wing. Madame Digweed, who had seen more than her share of Marauder antics, had got wise sometime in sixth year and started tethering them to their beds whenever they were obliged to pay a visit. When asked where she'd gotten the idea – as well as the very sturdy, magic-impervious tethers – her cryptic reply had been, 'I have a friend who keeps goats.'

Tactfully, the subject had never again been raised.

Now, however, Sirius was beginning to wish he knew a bit more about this friend-with-goats: it sounded sordid, and he could really use some blackmail material on the nurse. 'Er, hello?' he called hopefully into the silence. 'Hellloooo-'

'What?' a familiar voice groused, immediately before the curtain to Sirius's right was thrown out of the way.

Since Sirius had little shame where Remus was concerned, the first words out of his mouth were, 'I really to need to pee.'

'Are you going to shout at me as well?' was the complete non-sequiter of a reply.

Sirius got halfway through arching a brow before he decided the headache wasn't worth it. 'Shout at you?' he asked, shifting in an effort to take pressure off his bladder as inconspicuously as possible: this seemed like one of those Touchy Subjects one didn't interrupt with news about urination. 'Why would I be shouting?' When Remus, clearly under the impression that Sirius was sharpening his wit with a bit of light sarcasm, rolled his eyes, Sirius sighed and tried a different tack. 'I recently took a staircase to the head Moony, forgive me if I'm a bit hazy on details.'

Remus had the grace to look mildly admonished, but didn't completely abandon his petulant frown. 'About this morning,' he grumbled. 'The…disagreement. James is still angry – he called me a drama queen.'

Sirius let out a snort and murmured, 'takes one to know one.'

'What?' Remus snapped.

'I said it takes one to know one,' Sirius enunciated, wondering just how embarrassing it would be to wet the bed at the advanced age of seventeen.

'Meaning?' Remus baited, doing a much more successful job of arching one eyebrow than Sirius had.

'Meaning that James has the entire first act of Merlin and Morganna memorised, including the part of the fair lady Elaine.' This earned a smile that promised much piss-taking. 'And,' he added before Remus could look properly smug, 'meaning that if you want to recline on your sickbed and make ultimatums whilst your war wounds are still oozing, I'll be happy to credit you with a proper sense of drama. But I'm not abandoning poor werewolf you to the elements just because you're afraid you'll nibble on something that upsets your delicate stomach.'

'This isn't funny – '

'No, it isn't,' Sirius snapped, his limited supply of patience run through. 'Neither is the fact that I'm about to piss into that empty Skele-grow bottle - but both facts are true.' With supreme effort he managed to untangle his tether from his bedclothes and not-quite-tumble out of bed to stand before Remus. 'Do you think we spent all those months figuring out how to become animagi just so we could impress girls at parties? In case you haven't noticed, I don't smell so nice as a dog and James can't fit through the average door with those antlers – and neither of us would trade that because it means that we can keep your werewolf from hurting anyone. Including yourself. We aren't quitting Remus, and there're more of us than there are of you, so you might as well get used to it.'

'And what happens if you aren't there one month?' Remus demanded, eyes burning hotly into Sirius's. 'What if you can't stop me?'

'That won't happen,' Sirius said simply.

'Yes it –'

'No,' Sirius interrupted through clenched teeth, 'it won't.'

This goaded Remus past the point of endurance. 'You're being unreasonable -' he began.

'And you're shouting about lycanthropy at the top of your voice,' Sirius riposted, snatching up the Skele-grow bottle and waving it about for emphasis. 'Look, I'm holding in three litres of liquid, I've been probed in inappropriate places, and my tongue feels like felt, so I'm only going to say this once: you aren't escaping us. No matter where you run, no matter what you do, we're going to be right there behind you. Or in front of you, as the case may be,' he added after a moment's thought. 'You can feel free to chase all the girls in nightdresses you fancy, because we're always going to be there, just like we were last time.' He paused for another moment since this thinking thing seemed to be doing him good. 'In fact, if we could chase more girls in nightdresses, that would be great. Because the thing is, Remus, I don't care how much you bite and scratch and drool. I am never going to let you harm yourself, or anyone else – and I don't care if I have to let you tear me to pieces to stop you, I will always be between you and anyone you might regret hurting.'

By this point Remus was staring, glassy-eyed, at Sirius, his mouth not quite closed. Sirius couldn't tell if he had gone into catatonic shock thanks to the saccharine, greeting-card speech or if he was just deeply moved. Deciding it didn't really matter, as Remus had been quite effectively shut up, Sirius clapped him on the shoulder and added, 'Now if you could close that curtain I would really appreciate it – you know I always get stage fright.'

Turning his back and fumbling with the top on the bottle, Sirius heard Remus's footsteps shuffle backwards. And then something tapped on his shoulder and he whirled around, afraid he was about to see the nurse. But it was just Remus, holding out a shiny metal bowl. 'Bedpan,' his friend said wryly. 'Even if you can manage to go with me here, your aim's never been good enough to hit a bottle.'

*.*.*.*.*

When she didn't immediately spot Sirius in the common room on her return from the quidditch pitch, Ze decided she might as well deposit her things in her room before she went looking for him. She was already taking a chance on propositioning him so soon after fracturing his skull, and she didn't think manky quidditch gear would help set the mood. Pounding up the stairs to her dormitory, she threw the door open and was halfway across the room before she realised that she'd just stepped into a mine field. The instant her ocular nerves made contact with her brain, she froze – tricky, as she was mid-step when she did so. But forward movement didn't seem wise: it would put her directly between Serena and Grace, who were facing off like gunfighters in the queen of all spaghetti Westerns.

'You alright Ze?' Serena asked calmly, her gaze never wavering from Grace's face.

'Er, fine, thanks…' Ze replied hesitantly, her leg beginning a slight tremor at supporting the weight of her raised foot. She licked her lips, and decided a bit of distraction was in order. 'You?'

'Oh, never better,' was Serena's cool, vicious answer.

I am so glad it's not me she's looking at like that, Ze thought fervently as she lowered her leg a degree at a time to avoid detection. A flash of red further in the room drew her eye to Lily, who was standing, poised for action, just at the foot of Dorcas's harem tent. When she opened her mouth to enquire just what the hell was going on, Lily shook her head quickly and covertly, raising a finger to her lips. This just earned her a puzzled look from Ze: surely Grace knew Lily was there?

And then Grace ruined Ze's train of thought by saying, 'I'm not surprised this is you at your peak,' as she sneered at Serena. 'From what I hear, you were never very good to begin with.'

Rather than dissolving into tears as she once would have, Serena just tossed her hair and matched the blonde scathe for scathe. 'Don't you ever get tired of being so hopelessly unoriginal Grace? You might just out of practise, but I actually think your verbal skills have always been this pathetic.' Cocking her head to one side she bared her teeth in a smile and added, 'I would suggest making use of your oral talents, but from what I've heard you haven't got any of those either.'

There was a muffled shout of laughter from the direction of the gauze curtains, and Ze deduced that Dorcas was rounding out the party, making this quite the seventh year reunion. 'Oh, right,' Grace was snarling, whirling away from Serena to glare around at the rest of them, 'like you lot can talk. At least I'm smart enough not to get caught with my kit off!'

Serena visibly jerked at this, and Ze could clearly read Lily's lips forming the words how does she know? Privately, Ze thought the more important question was what does she know. But there was no time for that, not when Grace was turning that seething stare back on Serena and saying, 'And at least I don't have some silly, unrequited crush on someone who'll never even look at me.'

Serena's cheeks flooded with colour at this, and Ze had the feeling she couldn't have been more shocked if Grace had slapped her. 'Oi, jealousy's no excuse for cruelty,' Ze heard herself snapping, only to have Grace turning on her.

'Jealous?' the blonde smirked. 'Why would I be jealous of that?' she jabbed a finger in Serena's direction. 'She's pathetic, pining over him like she's actually got a chance of getting his attention.' And then it was Grace's turn to cock her head in that maddening, mocking way. 'Oh, but maybe you haven't noticed, Zaz, because you've been too busy making friends in Hufflepuff.'

For a moment Ze could only stare blankly at her, wondering just when she'd been making friends in Hufflepuff, because Colin Cross had been ages ago and – oh shit. Oh shit. Suddenly they were standing before her, all massive earrings and over-lined eyes, demanding she help them seek revenge on the very blonde bitch glaring at her now. Riya and Ellie. Oh – oh- well, shit didn't even begin to describe it.

'At least I get crushes!' Serena was shouting, her face now mottled with anger. 'At least I've got some feelings! Not like some people, who just go round stealing other people's boyfriends for fun!'

Graces imminently mature response was, 'You lying slag,' accompanied by a rough shove to the shoulder.

'Don't you touch me!' Serena thundered. 'Don't you dare touch me!' And then she returned the favour, shoving Grace right back.

'Okay, that's enough of that,' came Lily's authoritative voice as the head girl strode forward.

But they were well past the point of voices, as, with an inarticulate shout, Grace shoved Serena – this time hard enough to knock the brunette off her feet and into Ze's bed. Colliding painfully with the stout wooden post at the corner, Serena let out a howl of pain that almost entirely covered the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor. She was back up and retaliating with fingernails in Grace's face when Ze was distracted by a bundle of dark fabric rolling - wait, fabric - rolling? - by her feet. She threw out her foot in an attempt to stop the thing's progress, but only managed to pin down a corner of the fabric with her shoe. While it didn't stop the movement it did serve to remove the wrapping, as every subsequent revolution of the object within removed another layer of cloth. Within seconds the dull susurrus of cloth against stone had morphed into the harsh thunk of metal, and Ze was startled to see what looked alarming like a cage turned on its side roll out into the open.

Momentarily forgetting the shrieks and curses of the clawing mass behind her, she stepped forward for a better look. Every step she took away from the blazing row made it easier to hear what was, at first, a faint buzzing murmur, and despite the shadow cast by her own looming figure, Ze realised she could see things moving behind the bars. 'What the…' she muttered, bending closer.

And then she wished she hadn't, because the moment she moved she un-blocked the light and then she could see for sure that there were things moving – and what was worse, she could see what they were. And suddenly all that buzzing and giggling and muttering made sense. 'Shit!' she shouted, leaping backward, praying this was some sort of hallucination.

Her outburst at least had the positive effect of shutting up the last vestiges of the catfight. Dorcas was now restraining Serena and Lily had Grace in a chokehold. 'What now?' the redhead panted, looking impatiently up at Ze, who was backing steadily away from the thing at her feet. Her next step gave Lily a glimpse of it and she caught enough breath to ask, 'What is that?'

Ze turned, eyes desperately wide. 'A cage. Full of Cornish pixies,' she added, and licked her lips as the colour drained from the faces before her. 'And they've just about gnawed through the lock.'

Behind her there was a fatal schnick of metal giving way, followed by a maniacal giggle. Then all they could hear was the buzzing of hundreds of wings and the ping of the cage bars being hurled at the walls. And it wasn't very long after that that Serena began to scream.

*.*.*.*.*

The moment James appeared in the dormitory, Sirius went sprinting down the stairs to the common room. Staring blankly at his friend's retreating form, James said, 'Do I smell that badly?'

Remus shifted nervously on his bead and said, 'No. He's just been waiting for the rest of you to get back – I think he wants to talk to Ze.'

'Ah,' James nodded, easing his way into the room and dropping his quidditch kit at the foot of his bed. 'Don't think we'll be seeing him again tonight.' Remus didn't verbalise the question, but James still heard it. 'She had that look in her eye.'

It was Remus's turn to say, 'Ah.' And then there was silence; awkward, uneasy silence. Practically tying his fingers into knots, Remus finally said, 'Look, about what I said today, and what happened on Tuesday night –'

'You're frustrated, Remus,' James broke in lightly, knackered past the point of endurance and just not up to another argument. 'We all are. If it weren't for this stupid bet, Sirius and I wouldn't have been spying on Lily and the rest, and you wouldn't have followed us to them, and if they hadn't been girls you wouldn't have chased them so far. And don't try to say you would have because I'm not buying it. We've been out with you loads of times and managed to get you away from people without any trouble. Well, much trouble. But don't try to make this all about you being some evil blood-thirsty monster because that's bollocks and we all know it.'

'This is about more than just naked girls,' Remus snapped. 'This is about the fact that I put you in danger as well –'

'Forget about it,' James said, his back to Remus now as he sorted through his homework.

'I just wanted –'

'I said forget about it.' James turned to repeat over his shoulder, and while his voice was relatively gentle, his eyes were brooking no opposition.

'No,' Remus said flatly. 'I will stop talking about it, if you want, but not until I'm sure we're alright -'

James smiled slightly. 'We're alright then.'

'Can't you even let me finish a sentence?' Remus demanded. 'Honestly, no one wants to pick a good fight anymore,' he muttered blackly.

This time James laughed out loud. 'Moony, you really need to get some.'

*.*.*.*.*

The common room was empty. Well, not empty, there were people everywhere actually, but there was no Ze and that was really all that mattered. Most of the students clustered around the fire and the tables were younger kids who didn't yet know about the crippling weight of O.W.L. or N.E.W.T. prep-work. Most of Ze's female friends were probably off in the library studying, but Sirius couldn't imagine she'd joined them after an exhausting training session. Speaking of which…could she still be down there in her precious personal shower?

Spotting a shock of red hair by the base of the girls' staircase, Sirius wound his way over to Rob and called, 'Oi – you seen Ze?'

To his surprise, Rob turned to focus all of his attention on Sirius's face as he grinned widely – and with disturbing cheer. 'Yeah – she's up in her room,' was the reply.

And you're loitering by the only exit, Sirius thought, giving Rob a thorough once-over. Not good… 'Is something going on?' he asked hesitantly, not quite sure he wanted to know.

'Oh, nothing much – missed you tonight,' Rob added, and Sirius couldn't tell if the distraction was deliberate or not. 'Quidditch's been rubbish this week – I won't be surprised if we lose to Ravenclaw on Saturday.'

This time Sirius didn't care if the distraction was deliberate: Rob had insulted Gryffindor honour. 'What d'you mean – we haven't lost to Ravenclaw in a decade. We could win this match with our eyes closed!'

Rob just shrugged. 'You'd better hope that's true, 'cos everyone's pretty much dead on their brooms lately.'

'James is the best seeker at school and Ze –' Sirius began hotly, only to be interrupted by a full-bodied scream coming from the girls' dormitories. There was a brief hitch in conversation across the common room, but when no dead bodies fell from above normal activity resumed. Sirius wasn't so reassured. 'Don't you think we should –' He only got halfway through the sentence before he realised Rob was smirking smugly to himself. Sirius knew that smirk – he usually helped put it on Rob's face, because he was usually in on the joke. 'What's going on?' he asked shrewdly. 'And don't say nothing.'

'Fine,' Rob grinned. 'I won't.'

'Well you'd better say something,' Sirius growled, taking a step towards him.

Rob raised both hands in mock surrender and laughed. 'I'm just being polite,' he said innocently. 'She got me a gift so it's only fair that I got her one, isn't it?'

This went beyond confusing: gifts? 'No one's given you anything,' Sirius said. 'And who's "she"?'

Rob snorted. 'No one's given me anything – I like that. If you take a moment to think though, you might recall that someone's been sending me stuff in the mail. Stuff like letters – and chocolates. And I don't think it was a coincidence that those chocolates tasted like shit.'

Sirius rolled his eyes. 'So someone sent you crap sweets – '

'I don't mean they were shit as in quality,' Rob interrupted smartly, distracting Sirius from a new chorus of thuds and shouts echoing down from above. 'I mean they literally tasted like shit - poo, crap, faeces. And the letter said they were supposed to!'

Either Rob was the new captain of the Hogwarts Paranoia and Delusion team, or something very strange was going on. 'You think some girl is sending you poo filled chocolates?' he asked slowly.

'Some girl,' Rob sneered. 'Come off it mate – you're not that good of an actor. You know exactly what I'm talking about. She probably told you what she was doing, or asked for your advice.'

'Why would some girl ask me what to send you?' Sirius asked, incredulous.

'You can it deny all you like,' Rob shrugged, not sounded bothered by this in the least. 'I know what I know – and Ze's not getting away with it this time.'

Sirius was sure Rob had said "she's not getting away with it this time", and he had opened his mouth and got halfway through asking, 'Who is "sh"-' before his brain registered the zed. Not she - Ze. For a moment his vision greyed and all he saw were spots…and then the laughter started. 'Rob, you tosser – it can't be Ze –'

'Why not?' Rob asked, and if he hadn't been laughing so hard, Sirius might have been worried about the fact that Rob didn't sound belligerent in the least. A belligerent Rob was one who thought he might lose the fight – a calm Rob was a dangerous thing indeed…

Still chuckling, Sirius shook his head. 'Why would Ze send you chocolates? Even ones filled with shit? Why go to the trouble?'

'Because she's bloody well in love with me,' Rob said in sing-songy voice, as though this should be obvious.

This had Sirius wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. 'Look mate,' he finally managed to choke out, 'I think I can safely say that Ze is not in love with you -'

'Really?' Rob replied, rolling the word out like the richest of red carpets. A hand dipped into the pocket of his school robes, slung on over his after-quidditch ensemble, and reappeared holding aloft a thick, distinctively addressed letter. 'Have a look at this and see if it doesn't change your tune. Go on,' he prodded, proffering the letter to a faintly stunned Sirius. 'It's completely weird and definitely kinky, but you'll see what I mean.'

Having known about the letters in theory and being faced with them in fact were two very different things, and Sirius found his fingers shaking slightly as he re-opened the wax seal. He wasn't keen on reading personal correspondence at the best of times, and if this was something Rob thought was weird and kinky….well. Shaking out the parchment, Sirius had only got as far into the letters as My Dearest Rob, While I had hoped that, at this juncture in our correspondence, I might have discovered some slightly redeeming quality to your character, I seem to find that you are as lewd and repulsive as ever… before Rob's voice was interrupting him, saying, 'See? If that isn't the lady protesting too much, I don't know what is.'

And you would know all about protesting ladies, Sirius thought, even as he sighed with relief: the handwriting definitely wasn't Ze's. Nor was the vocabulary – Ze would never refer to Rob as a prevaricating popinjay in print when she could just call him a lying bastard to his face. 'Thank Merlin,' he mumbled, hastily folding the letter back up; it was, after all, none of his business and - wait, did that say- Sirius's eyes raked down the page, and he felt the bile rise in his throat. Right, definitely not Ze, because Ze would never reference Rob "mounting his naughty broom and riding it into submission". At least, he sincerely hoped she wouldn't…

'See what I mean?' Rob was asking smugly as Sirius swallowed convulsively and shoved the mass of paper back at Rob's chest. 'Pretty twisted stuff, in'it – '

'Rob,' Sirius began, attempting to look as honest and trustworthy as possible, 'I really don't think Ze is the one writing these –'

'Oh, come off it,' Rob snorted good-humouredly. 'I know she is – who else could it be? She's probably just told you not to say anything to me about it though, hasn't she?' he asked with a wink. 'So what do you know that I don't? Eh?'

Sirius was just opening his mouth to disavow all knowledge of the letters when Rob's words connected – "What do you know that I don't?" – a stifled snort of laughter - "That answer could take days." Working furiously, Sirius's brain tunnelled through memories until he placed the brief exchange: Ze, she had come into class late and asked him – breakfast, she had asked him what she had missed at breakfast. He had replied that someone was sending Rob letters through the post – and food. And she hadn't seemed surprised about it, had even made some knowing comment…

Ze hadn't had anything to do with the writing of the letters – Sirius still firmly believed that - but she definitely knew about them, which meant she knew who was writing them. Which could only mean - Sirius, who had been staring at Rob with the expression of a disoriented flounder, was rudely jerked back to the present by the sound of a scream. It was hardly the first scream to issue from the girls' dormitories that night, but it was definitely the loudest yet – possibly because this time the door was open. Soon the screaming was a chorus of shouts, accompanied by mad little giggles and the sound of feet pounding on stairs.

Sirius's eyes darted to Rob in time to see the younger boy's face go ashen. 'Right,' Rob croaked. 'They're out of their cage then –'

'Cage?' Sirius growled, forgetting all about the letters.

'Time to run,' Rob was saying in a poor imitation of cheer, completely oblivious to the snarl on Sirius's face. 'I'll just have that back then,' he added, snatching the letter from Sirius's fingers. 'Best get behind a door,' he added, and, clapping Sirius on the shoulder, fled.

By this point the yells had spiralled down the stairs, and Sirius could discern one voice above all the others. Forgetting, for the moment, all about Rob, he went charging toward the bottom of the stairs, shouting, 'Ze! Ze!'

With impeccable timing she hurtled off the stairs and slammed right into Sirius's chest. She didn't even pause to apologise, however – just grabbed his hand and started towing him in the opposite direction. 'Get down!' she was shouting to the students – wide-eyed and gaping to a one – who were sprawled around the common room. 'Get under the tables – anything! Just don't open the door!'

Sirius, barely aware that the rest of the girls' seventh was streaming past them, grabbed Ze by the shoulders, whirled her round to face him, and demanded, 'What is going on?'

She was breathlessly heaving for air, and he suddenly noticed that there were several small red marks on her left cheek – almost like tiny handprints. 'Cornish pixies,' she panted. 'About a hundred of them.'

'Oh,' Sirius said as his knees knocked reflexively together. 'Well fuck.'

*.*.*

In the Gryffindors' defence, there really wasn't time to prepare. Lily had done her head girl best to instil order in the common room, but there was still a dangerous amount of screaming and arm-waving going on as the enemy swarmed out of the stairwell in a cloud of supernaturally strong pea-brained malice. In no time at all the tapestries were aflame and first years were flying trough the air in a spirited game of pixie darts. 'Freeze them!' Lily was shouting over the din. 'Come on – even second years know the spell!'

Her advice might have been a bit more creditable if she hadn't been issuing it from twelve feet up, dangling from the chandelier as two pixies attempted to shove her captured wand up her left nostril.

Lily's commentary deteriorated rather quickly after that, abandoning reason to abuse the patronage of various pixies and the intelligence of various students. Serena, whose tresses had come under attack, accidentally put a Freezing Charm on her own head in an attempt to get rid of her assailants. Dorcas turned away from her own fight to cast the counter-charm and found herself being dragged into the air by her ankles.

'That's a lot of purple,' Sirius mumbled, momentarily stunned by the display.

'They're called bloomers – you might recall that you own a pair,' Ze snapped from behind him, where she was stood against him, back to back. 'You!' she shouted suddenly, grabbing a passing third year and flinging him under a table. His two companions, who had been following him in a demented imitation of a conga line, were hurled after him without ceremony, and the moment the third boy was safely beneath the barrier Sirius heard Ze shout, 'Protegus Maximus!' He looked over just in time to see a dive-bombing pixie collide with an invisible barrier and bounce off, clutching it's head.

It was brilliant – well, actually it was a rather obvious solution, but she was brilliant for having thought of it. Sirius went still, frozen by the sudden knowledge that Ze was the most amazing person alive. Wow he thought, staring at her face, clenched in concentration and sweating profusely. I love you. And then he was being lifted off his feet – doubtlessly to be used as a human dart – and she was dragging him back down. Before he could thank her, she'd shouted, 'This isn't a tea party - pay attention!' and gone back to blasting anything with wings.

Grinning like a fool, Sirius immediately returned to casting spells in every direction. It soon became apparent, however, that they were fighting a losing battle. The majority of the lower years were either imprisoned or enduring torture – Sirius wasn't in time to save a small girl from being dragged, kicking and screaming, from beneath a wing-back chair – and the few older students who had been present when the fight broke out were either enduring similar pain or had been incapacitated by their own wands. True, there were a number of frozen pixies floating harmlessly in the air – but three times as many were swarming around the surviving humans.

'Did someone get out in time to warn McGonagall?' Ze called to Sirius as she attempted to hold off five pixies and simultaneously douse a small fire.

'Don't – know!' he panted back, hurling a Stunner at an approaching table, wielded by three of the gleefully grinning wingèd devils. 'We – need – help!'

This was such an obvious understatement Ze didn't even bother to reply. She was just preparing to resign herself to Death by Tapestry when she felt something fly past her ear at high speed. The pixie bearing down on her eyebrow was catapulted backwards through space, and suddenly Ze was aware that the room was full of the sound of tiny objects whizzing through the air. At first she was sure they must be darts or the effect of a badly botched charm, and then she squinted at the cloud forming around a nearby pixie and realised she was looking at small puffs of mottled purple fuzz. A loud growling echoed around the room, and Ze leapt to the side, plastering herself to the wall just in time to see a dark something streak through the air and maul a pixie. It didn't take her long to realise that the mysterious little balls of fluff weren't accidental spell residue, but miniature versions of the two… things mercilessly destroying the pixies. She was still staring open-mouthed when Sirius managed the hurl himself against the wall beside her.

'What –' he began, and then glanced toward the far end of the room where the two dark purple blobs were streaking like foul-smelling comets through a boiling cloud of pixies. 'Well fuck me,' he breathed. 'Pete's socks.'

Ze wasn't sure if the socks could technically hear, but somehow one of them knew the moment the words were out of Sirius's mouth, and it had turned to snarl in their direction before his lips had so much as closed. 'I think it –' Ze began, but Sirius was already letting out a petrified squeak and dragging her backwards. Ze's left ankle twisted violently and they were suddenly falling. Her last impression was of a furious sock bearing down on her and then, with a swish of fabric, everything was dark. 'Great,' she mumbled, once she had discerned that she was lying on her back across what felt like very lumpy floor. 'I've passed out again.'

'Er,' a hesitant voice said from beneath her. 'Not precisely.'

'Sirius?' she squeaked, sitting up rapidly and smacking her head against something hard.

'Ssssh!' he admonished, shifting rapidly beneath her. She felt what she assumed were his legs snaking out from underneath her own, and then, 'That sounded nasty – are you alright?'

'Yeah,' she winced, rubbing her head as her eyes adjusted to the dark. 'Sorry for landing on you – I seem to be doing that a lot today.'

'S'okay,' he replied in a low voice. 'I don't mind.' The back of Ze's neck prickled at the tone, but before she could get properly distracted he was crawling past her to peer through what looked like a break between two tapestries. It was then that Ze realised they must be inside the tiny secret alcove Dorcas had once used to show off her plot against Rob. From the other side of the tapestries she could hear the shrieks and growls of the fight – now apparently being waged solely between footwear and fairies. 'Bloody hell,' he whispered. 'It's really them. And they've – they've spawned.'

Ze crept forward to peer through the crack beside him, taking in the finer details of the scene. But, despite the familial resemblance between the, er, full-grown footwear and the smaller purple blots, she was still a bit sceptical. 'Can socks spawn?'

'I don't think they're really socks anymore,' Sirius murmured. 'I think they're more like highly trained assassins.'

'Who just so happened to be waiting around for someone to release a plague of pixies on Gryffindor house?' Ze asked, complete with brow-arch.

'Well, those little purple things do look freshly, er, hatched,' Sirius explained. 'Maybe they needed feeding.'

'Yeah, well, they can start with whoever left those fucking pixies in our dormitory,' Ze growled.

Sirius winced and muttered, 'Rob, you sick bastard,' under his breath.

'What?' Ze asked, and even in the dark Sirius knew her eyes were narrowed dangerously.

'Er –'

'You just said something about Rob and sick bastards – explain.'

Male solidarity, Sirius decided, could go straight to hell. And stay there, until Ze stopped looking ready to whip out the thumbscrews. 'Look,' he began, making a hasty decision and forgetting entirely about the pitched battle raging just outside the door, 'I'm going to tell you this because I'm assuming you don't know it yet, okay?' Grabbing Ze's arm he drew her further back into the alcove, where they were less likely to be discovered. Standing himself in front of her, Sirius looked down until he located the twin glints of her eyes and said, 'You know those mystery letters Rob's been getting? He thinks they're from you.'

There was a long moment of silence, broken by the sound of shattering glass from the common room, and then Ze said, 'Oh fuck.'

This caused a moment of bowel-trembling fear in Sirius. 'They aren't, are they?' he asked desperately.

Again, he didn't need a light to know that she was shooting him a nasty glare. 'Don't be stupid,' she snapped impatiently. 'They're from – never mind. Why the hell does he think I'm sending them?'

'Because – and I quote – "who else could it be?"'

'It could be anyone else!' was the exasperated response. 'It's not like he's running low on enemies. And he's just made about four more – well, he's made us worse enemies – with this little trick.'

Sirius was shaking his head. 'He says they – the pixies, I mean -

were meant to be a gift.'

'Oh, yeah,' Ze snorted, 'they'll go perfectly with my death wish.'

'I sort of got the impression it wasn't supposed to be a nice gift,' Sirius admitted. 'More like a cheeky "you aren't the only one who's clever". He did mention something about faeces-flavoured chocolates.'

Dorcas, I am bloody well going to kill you. 'I cannot believe this,' Ze mumbled aloud. Which, of course, meant that it was definitely happening – her entire life seemed to be unbelievable lately. Of course, life wasn't going so well for most of her friends at the moment, so at least she wasn't in it alone. Lily still wanted to kill James; Rob had just, for all intents and purposes, slapped Dorcas across the face with a glove; and Serena was apparently desperately in love - with someone who didn't know she was alive. Because spiteful, vindictive and downright evil Grace might be, but she always seemed to have her facts straight. Which was really a pity, because somehow she knew about Tuesday night. And Riya and Ellie. Bugger.

'…he let me read one of the letters, so of course I knew it wasn't you, but he's definitely convinced,' Sirius was saying. 'It doesn't fit though – I mean, sending letters like that is just such a girl way of getting even and you would never –'

Something in the words stopped Ze's thought process cold, and she held up a hand. 'What did you just say?'

Sirius stuttered to an immediate halt, sensing that he might have just driven the first nail into his own coffin. 'Er….ah…'

'The bit about getting even,' she prompted impatiently.

'I said,' he began, 'well, I said that - what I meant was –'

'Just say it again, Sirius,' Ze requested, and the lack of anger in her voice lit a tiny flame at the end of what had promised to be a very long tunnel.

'I just said that sending anonymous letters isn't really a fair way of fighting. I mean, they aren't even really threatening, are they? They just sort of say "now you know I know" – well, that and stuff about Rob mounting his broom, but that's just sick,' he added with a shudder. 'And I didn't mean that you wouldn't write them because you aren't a girl,' he hastily continued. 'I just meant that you wouldn't go after someone like that because –'

'Because it's a sneaky, underhanded, girl way of fighting,' Ze breathed, a small smile blooming on her face as the idea really took hold. Maybe they'd been going about it all wrong. Confronting Grace face-to-face clearly wasn't solving the problem, but rather making it worse. Maybe what she needed was something a little more subtle, a little more cruel – a little more girl. The only problem was that this wasn't an area Ze herself had any experience in. And then she remembered Sirius, frowning at the fire as he said "I know it's stupid, but she'll have won". Where Sirius was concerned, Grace always won. I can learn, Ze thought viciously. I can bloody well learn.

Sirius's voice calling her name brought her back to the present. 'Sorry, you just looked like you were having a fit or something,' he said when she shook herself. 'Your face was all contorted and you –'

'I was having an idea,' Ze said calmly. 'About revenge.'

This had Sirius's brows arching. 'You want to get back at Rob?'

'No. Grace.'

This pushed him past surprise straight into incredulity. 'Uhh…'

'Look, I'm not going to tell you anything now because I don't even know if it's going to work,' she hurried to explain. 'I'm going to need help – a lot of help, actually. But not from you. This isn't about you. Well, not entirely. Mostly it's about – never mind. The point is, I'll explain when I'm sure it's not just some crap idea that's never going to work.'

Sirius, who rarely ever heard Ze this breathless and confused, could only nod and say, 'Okay,' in spite of being horribly bewildered.

She flashed him a quick smile, and there went that warm, sparkling rush all the way to his fingertips. She was cute when she was mischievous, but she was bloody well gorgeous when she was seriously out for blood. Feeling a smile quirking at the corners of his mouth he reached out and tucked a bit of hair behind her ear, saying, 'Did you really send Rob shit-filled chocolates?'

She was momentarily thrown by the shift in subject, but quickly recovered. 'I didn't send him anything.'

'Well, but you know who did,' Sirius said with a smile, his hand dropping to her shoulder where his thumb tapped contentedly.

Ze's eyes darted to the side and she let out a nervous little laugh. 'Look,' she began, and Sirius suddenly knew that she was about to tell him who Rob's mystery pen-pal was just because she trusted him.

Without waiting another moment he stepped forward so that they were toe-to-toe and smiled a crooked, happy smile. 'Is this the point in our relationship where we start telling one another everything?'

Ze's breathing hitched, but she managed to say, 'Relationship?' with credible scepticism.

'Mmm,' Sirius nodded. 'That's when two people share a close connection or similarity.'

Ze's tongue darted out to moisten her lips. 'Sirius, we need to talk.'

'Yeah,' he agreed absently, his fingers slipping back up to her hair, 'we do. About what happened this morning – and what's about to happen now…' He felt her breath catch and watched as her lips parted and knew that she knew he was about kiss her. And just as he was tightening his hold and tipping his head down there was an apocalyptic blasting of trumpets that had them both leaping into the air and colliding at the forehead.

Sirius tumbled back into a handy chair and Ze flailed her way into the drapery covering the door. 'What the bloody hell –' Sirius snarled, fighting his way to his feet.

He had just reached Ze, who was hanging halfway outside the alcove, clutching the tapestry for support, when her voice stopped him dead. 'Circe's sweet sweatpants,' she mumbled. 'The cavalry's here.'

And then through the curtains came the unmistakeable sound of James Potter's voice, shouting, 'I've got a lint roller and I'm not afraid to use it!'

A/N

First: mea culpa! i promised ages ago never to make you wait more than a month again - but it really couldn't be helped. end of term was AWFUL and i've decided i want to go travelling again so i've been trying to get that sorted... in other words, real life. which isn't much of an excuse, but it's the only one i've got!

the bad news is, this chapter is more or less what it was when i started writing it weeks and weeks ago. i've gone through and tacked bits in to make the plot make sense (well, more or less) but i've decided that rather than spending more time making it palatable, i'll just post it in the interest of getting the story finished and edit later. the good news is, Part Deux (this was originally one massive chapter, in desperate need of editing) will be posted in about three days. yes, you did read that correctly: three days. it's already written (well, most of it - i'm just going to slap an ending on) and, rather than going through and cutting out all the extraneous dialogue, i've decided i'll just put them up together and work on Chapter 37 so that i don't go mad. well, madder. ;)

so, before you become terribly disappointed with the incredibly sub-par quality, please know that i will eventually come back to fix this - it will probably just be after the story as a whole is completed (which, sadly, will be soon...). i hate being the author who has to do this, but i would like to get this finished before the end of the summer (and yes, this year i really do mean it!) so, apologies for this not being terribly funny, or well-written, or even edited for spelling mistakes... but, i'm hoping it won't put you all off forever!

thanks so much to all who have been reading and reviewing - so sorry to have made you wait!

xx


	36. The Art of War: Part Deux

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

'Fear is the most elegant weapon; your hands are never messy.'

- Jenny Holzer

Chapter 36:The Art of War: Part Deux

Madame Digweed was not amused.

Shortly after James Potter had executed the world's first Rescue by Grooming Accoutrement, Professor McGonagall stormed the portrait hole and lay about with the Freezing Charms, which had proved only slightly less effective when it came to smiting than the generally preferred jawbone of an ox. Whilst most of the house later agreed that Minerva McFab was indeed a symbol of Gryffindor cool, certain persons were less than pleased by the way things turned out. After all, James had not had the chance to properly liberate Lily, who plummeted from the ceiling shortly after one of McGonagall's ubercharms decimated the chandelier support. But, aside from that small hitch in otherwise normal broadcasting, the world did managed to return to its basic state – which was to say, utter and complete panic. The sound of their head of house's voice thundering off the walls had summoned the besieged Gryffindors from the safety of their dormitories, but the sight of the dreaded socks – still circling the ceiling in a cloud of their fluffy offspring – had re-induced pandemonium as everyone ran for safety, shelter and cameras.

On the fringe of the melee, torn between duty and desire, Sirius and Ze had exchanged a look which contained much baring of souls, burning of eyes, and possibly the unabridged version of Taliesin's Lover's Lament. 'Tomorrow,' Sirius had ground out, his fingers tightening around his wand.

'Tomorrow,' Ze agreed. 'Tomorrow night.'

It was the sort of promise that sets fire to one's heart – and, in the case of adolescent hormones, various other bits of the anatomy as well. It was sad, really, that Serena missed it (if nothing else, she could have acted as chaperone) but Ze and Sirius had eyes only for one another and didn't miss her at all. There had been a further moment of soulful staring, interrupted by a mighty war cry as Professor McGonagall valiantly vanquished one of the marauding socks with a well-aimed laundering charm. After that, things had gone rather rapidly to purgatory. But, as this was a step up from where they had been, no one really minded.

Except for Madame Digweed. Now that the battle was over the majority of Gryffindor house was queuing out her doors, awaiting treatment for injuries ranging from scorched eyebrows to cracked skulls. 'Socks?' she kept muttering under her breath. 'Socks and sodding pixies?'

The girls of Gryffindor seventh wisely kept their mouths closed – even if they hadn't been the ones to smuggle the pixies into Gryffindor tower they still had no desire to be drawn and quartered for unleashing the little buggers on the common room. They had been in hospital for ages, certainly long enough for the nurse to work her way down from the critical cases to the merely serious, and were doing their best to keep out of sight. Presently, they were clustered around a bed which held Dorcas, whose head was enswathed in a rakish bandage – only a flesh wound – as she reclined on the pillows, waiting for a dose of Skele-grow to heal the nasty break in her arm. Serena, seated beside her, had a steaming hot towel wrapped round her head, and was smoking faintly at the ears courtesy of the Pepper-up potion Madame Digweed had poured down her throat to "ward off the chill." Lily's nose bore an enormous plaster and a great deal of cotton wadding, but as she had informed Professor McGonagall, her pride was more injured than anything else. Ze alone was calamity-free, although she did have a number of mild abrasions and bites, which the matron had told her would have to wait. Ze, who neither knew nor trusted pixie opinions on dental hygiene, had smiled politely and pinched an antiseptic and some cotton swabs the moment Digweed's back was turned.

She looked up from the task of cleaning out her wounds at the sound of Lily's furious voice saying, 'When I catch whoever put those pixies in our dormitory…' The redhead was glowering – an expression which would have been threatening if she hadn't been squinting around the massive bandage on her nose.

A quick glance between Dorcas and Serena, gimlet-eyed and smoking at the ears, showed that they were every bit as angry as Lily was. 'I think it was Grace,' Serena hissed, barely keeping her voice to a whisper as the leant across Dorcas's knees. 'That vicious, evil c-.'

'Where would she have got pixies though?' Dorcas interrupted, only to fall silent as Ze snapped the privacy curtains closed around them with a flick of her wand.

'What was that –'

'It wasn't Grace,' Ze interrupted Serena's question.

'How can you be sure?' Dorcas asked, her own eyes narrowed with suspicion.

'Aside from the fact that she wouldn't risk destroying her own things?' Ze shot back, brows raised. 'It was Rob,' she added flatly. 'He told Sirius he'd done it.'

'What?' three voice chorused disbelievingly. 'Why?'

'Because girls like fairies,' Ze replied in a mocking, sing-song voice. 'Boy rubbish, as usual. He meant them as an, er, as a token of…affection,' she managed to say, and if anyone noticed her shifting uncomfortably in her seat, they didn't mention it.

'In your bed?' Dorcas asked immediately, gaze sharpening.

'I don't think he knew which bed to put them on,' Ze was quick to explain, 'so he just chose a random one. I think it's more like, well, like he…knows….um, like he knows – '

'Like he knows it must be a girl in Gryffindor who's sending him those letters, and he's trying to discover who it is by drawing her out with gifts?' Lily suggested helpfully.

'Yes, exactly!' Ze said, shooting her friend a grateful look before turning back to Dorcas. 'You sent him the chocolates – a gift that wasn't really a gift – so he's sending you something back to let you know he's onto you. Or that he's interested. Or…something.'

'Hmmm,' Dorcas murmured. 'So he still doesn't know it's me…'

'No, or he would've put them on your bed, wouldn't he?' Ze replied, wondering if this counted as an outright lie, or a just a not-telling-of-the-truth.

'Who's daft enough to give something as awful as Cornish pixies for a gift?' Serena asked in tones of deepest contempt.

'Well, Rob, for a start,' was Ze's wry reply.

'Where did he even get them?' Lily asked suspiciously. 'It's not like they just come flying through the window a hundred times a day.'

'Stole them, probably,' Ze sighed, settling back into her chair and wondering how she was going to bring up the subject she really wanted to talk about. 'My guess would be off Kettleburn. Apparently he keeps them for detentions – a nice little twist on old-fashioned sadism.'

They all sat silently and took a moment to recall the pandemonium in their dormitory: everything that wasn't nailed down flying through the air as the pixies pelted them with their own possessions. And then they relocated the scene to a thestral stall which needed mucking out… 'Eughg,' was the collective response.

'That wasn't a gift,' Lily said darkly, folding her arms across her chest. 'That was bloody revenge.' Ze breathed a sigh of relief: the topic was bringing itself up. Brilliant.

'Which means I've got him just where I want him – furious,' Dorcas was saying gleefully, looking positively piratical beneath her bandages.

'Yeah,' Ze agreed hastily. 'Which got me thinking…' She glanced around to see if she had everyone's attention, and was greeted by three pairs of bright, curious eyes.

'About Rob being furious?' Serena asked archly.

'About revenge,' Ze replied, leaning in and lowering her voice. 'And about Grace.'

There was a low chorus of 'Ahhhhh.'

'Am I correct in assuming,' Ze asked, 'that none of us is very fond of her?'

Serena snorted and flexed her hands. 'Do you have to ask?'

'Right, well…' Ze let out a sigh and worded the next bit as carefully as she could. 'Let's say that we aren't the only ones who feel that way – and that we aren't the only ones who might be interested in doing something about it.'

'Is this about the other night and –' Lily began, but Ze lifted a finger to her lips and slid her chair back to peer between a break in the curtains.

Satisfied that Madame Digweed had forgot completely about them, she cast a quick muffliato and returned to the bed, gesturing for the others to lean in. 'I'm going to tell you a secret, but before I do I want to be clear that it isn't my secret – which means I'm trusting you not to take advantage of it. I'm not saying you'll have to pretend I haven't told you because, trust me, that's going to be impossible, but…'

'Don't tell anyone else?' Lily suggested. 'And don't gloat about it?'

'Yeah,' Ze nodded. And then fairness made her add: 'Well, don't gloat too much anyway.'

'And this secret is?' Serena prompted a moment later when Ze was still trying to work out how to say it.

'The secret is…' She blew out one final breath and said, 'The secret is that Zeke, Rob, Peter, Sirius, James, Remus and Allister made a bet to see who could go the longest without sex.'

There was a long pause, and for the second time that night three voices cried "What?" in perfect harmony.

'That's ridiculous!' Serena said on a snort of laughter.

'They haven't given anything up,' Lily agreed with a scornful chuckle. 'None of them were having sex to begin with.'

'Well, maybe Zeke and Sirius,' Serena allowed with a shrug, ''Cos they had girlfriends. But the rest of them…'

'They didn't just give up shagging,' Ze explained patiently, 'by "sex" I mean all sexual activity – no snogging, no groping…no tossing off…' she added with a meaningful look. Three grimaces bloomed immediately in response to this.

'Mental image I'll never get rid of,' Lily muttered darkly.

But Serena was already breaking into a smile. 'They can't – they haven't - that's brilliant,' she cried, a gurgle of laughter following the words. 'That's absolutely hilarious.'

'Not to mention very useful,' Dorcas agreed evilly, all but cackling. 'And it explains everything.'

'Yeah, like why Potter's IQ is dropping faster than Celestina Warbeck's knickers,' Lily sniggered, eyes narrowing and mouth curling as all the possibilities flashed before her. 'Oh, this is going to be fun -'

'Okay, well, before you break out the miniskirt and the bustier, could I just point us back to the whole vengeance theme?' Ze said pointedly.

'What has this bet thing got to do with us getting back at Grace?' Serena asked, bemused. 'Aside from the fact that she chucked Sirius, which means he's not getting any, I don't see what she's got to do with it.'

'Sirius could be getting some if he wanted it, trust me,' Ze muttered, and ignored the way brows darted north. 'But the point is that Grace knows everything I've just told you – and no one's made her promise not to tell.'

'And she's not exactly been in a good mood lately, has she?' Serena said slowly. 'So this is…'

'Only to be expected?' Lily finished off for her, eyes narrowed in speculation rather than anticipation now. 'So she knows – and, presumably, she's going to tell. Who cares? Potter and the rest are always humiliating one another – and other, innocent people as well,' she sniffed righteously, clearly not having forgotten (or forgiven) the Great Knicker Debacle. 'Maybe it's time someone else had a go.'

'Yeah,' Dorcas agreed, the light of what Ze could only describe as bloodlust glittering in her eyes. 'Like us…'

'I'm not saying the humiliation's the problem,' Ze managed to get out before anyone could suggest a temporary alliance with the vituperative blonde. 'I'm saying Grace is the problem – mostly because she always wins,' she explained, recalling what Sirius had said on the subject. 'No matter what happens, she always comes out smelling of roses, perfect and so – so - bloody smug it drives me mad.'

'Well when you put it like that,' Lily murmured into the ensuing silence. When Lily said nothing else – and neither Serena nor Dorcas spoke up either – Ze heaved a sigh and played her last card.

'Look, I know you've never really rated James,' she said to Lily, 'and I know you'd like nothing more than to see Rob publicly humiliated,' she continued, turning to Dorcas. 'But I'm not doing this for Rob or James, I'm doing it for Sirius – and I think you all can guess why. You can tease me about that later,' she added, raising a hand when they all began to grin, 'but right now I need to know if you're willing to help me. Because Grace doesn't deserve to win, and while I'm happy to help you get yours back, I'm not going to let her do it for you. I've got a plan, whether you're in or not.' She swallowed. 'But I'm really hoping you're in.'

Lily rolled her eyes, immediately dropping her "convince me" expression. 'Of course we're in – we were just waiting for you to tell us your real reason for asking.'

'And that'll be five sickles each, please,' Serena added, waggling the fingers of her outstretched hand at both Dorcas and Lily.

'What?' Dorcas cried in outrage. 'But your money was on tomorrow –'

'It is now,' Serena consulted her watch, 'twenty minutes past midnight which, I do believe,' she grinned, 'makes it October twenty-first.'

This was greeted by much grumbling and Ze, utterly gobsmacked, looked on as Lily said, 'I'll get it when we've gone back up –'

'You had a bet?' Ze squawked, finding her voice at last. 'On me?'

Dorcas blinked at her. 'Well, yeah,' she said, the "of course" implicit in her tone.

'Just on when you'd finally admit you fancied Sirius,' Serena explained breezily. 'Lily's money was on this past Monday and Dorcas was sure you'd last at least another week, but I knew better,' she added, smiling smugly.

'But,' Ze began, her eyes darting to Lily, about to reveal that she'd already revealed. She was silenced, however, by the knowing half-smile Lily flashed – an expression Ze found herself returning. Lily had called Monday, and she'd been right…she'd just cared more about keeping Ze's confidence than collecting the money. 'Maybe I should open a bookies,' she mumbled with a shake of her head. 'Seems like there's loads of money to be made.

'You can work on that after we've decimated Grace,' Dorcas agreed. 'Now, tell us everything we haven't figured out already.'

'Er…' Ze began.

'We know that Grace knows some unsavoury things about this bet, and is threatening to reveal them,' Serena surmised. 'And that someone from Hufflepuff is involved.'

'Colin Cross?' Lily guessed immediately.

'No,' Ze denied, 'no, he hasn't got anything to do with this. The Hufflepuffs – there are actually two of them – are Zeke and Allister's girlfriends. I think Grace's original plan was to make the whole bet thing sound as sordid as possible, just sort of start rumours about it and let them get out of control. Ellie and Riya – that's Allister and Zeke's girlfriends – would've been furious.'

'Instant grounds for chucking them without a second chance,' Serena nodded sagely. 'She's always been good at things like that.'

'I know,' Ze agreed. 'What I can't figure out is why she didn't do it right when she found out. She's known since the weekend, so why wait? Why give Alli and Zeke the chance to explain themselves and save the relationship?'

Lily and Serena exchanged a knowing glance. Finally, Lily shrugged and said, 'Maybe she was waiting to see if anyone else got a girlfriend. She could've caused the fastest break-up in Hogwarts history with that kind of news.'

'You're talking about me and Sirius,' Ze said, realisation dawning. 'You think she was waiting to see what would happen between us.'

'Exactly,' Serena said with a rueful smile. 'But why waste time waiting for you to get together if she wasn't going to be able to break you up?' she continued, warming to the topic as she puzzled the matter out. 'If she knew about the bet, why wouldn't you? So she tested you, on Sunday night - she dropped a hint and you went running straight off to tell Sirius.'

'Which told her that you were getting closer to Sirius by the day,' Dorcas finished off as she adjusted her bandages. 'But it also told her that she was going to have to come up with something else to cause trouble.'

'So now she's threatening all of us,' Lily murmured, standing to pace the short distance between the curtain and the bed. 'That comment about running round naked wasn't aimed just at you, Zaz. Somehow she's found out that we were out of bounds on Tuesday night.'

'Well at least that's got her away from spreading rumours about the bet –' Ze began, only to be interrupted by Serena's hollow laugh.

'Don't be so hasty,' the brunette said with a shake of her head. 'Just because she can't use the information to take Sirius away from you doesn't mean she won't find some other way of exploiting it. Grace is the most devious person I've ever met – and she hasn't got even a hint of a conscience. If we want to stop her, we need to figure out who's she after.'

'Well that's obvious,' Ze said bluntly. 'She's proper furious with Sirius, and the three of us as well. The problem is, she can't really do anything to Sirius besides embarrass him – '

Lily clicked her tongue against her teeth, shaking her head much the way Serena just had. 'She could destroy Sirius with what she knows right now – she's not waiting on that.'

'What do you mean?' Dorcas and Ze exchanged a grimace in the wake of their chorus.

'She means that Grace could get to any one of the guys in on it,' Serena explained. 'I'm assuming that by now some of them are out, yeah? Of the bet?'

Ze tipped her head and reluctantly admitted: 'Zeke, Allister and Peter are out.'

'So that leaves Potter, Black, Lupin and –'

'Rob,' Dorcas finished for Serena.

'Not that Rob matters,' Serena continued. 'At least, not for what Grace would want. She would go after Lupin or Potter – probably Lupin,' she murmured darkly, fingers clenching, 'and either seduce him right in front of Black, or do it in secret and then make sure Sirius found out about it at an opportune time.'

Ze shook her head. 'No way,' she said staunchly. 'Wouldn't happen – Remus would never do that to Sirius, I don't care if Grace showed up in his bed wearing nothing but a manicure and a blush.'

'He's wound tighter than a bow string, Ze,' Serena said gently. 'He wouldn't be able to resist.'

Ze gave this brief consideration, and then shook her head again. 'You don't know Remus. But it doesn't matter,' she added, 'because it isn't going to come to that.'

'Ah, yes,' Lily murmured. 'Your infamous plan.'

'I've only mentioned it once,' Ze shot back, 'so it can't be infamous yet. I might settle for nefarious though.'

'I hope it isn't too complex,' Dorcas interjected, pushing her glasses firmly onto her nose to signal she was ready to plot. 'I'm at a very critical point in Operation Rogue.'

Serena and Lily exchanged an eye roll at this, but Ze just beamed. 'Cheers for that Dorcas, because you're part of my inspiration.' Dorcas looked vaguely flattered at this, and Lily arched a curious brow. 'See, part of what bothers me about Grace is the fact that she always seems to know things,' Ze explained.

'Well, yeah, she is the biggest gossip in the school,' Serena pointed out in snide tones

Ze tipped her head back and forth indecisively and said, 'Well…not exactly. I mean, she does always know what's going off before the rumours start - but if you think about it, try as hard as you like to remember her telling you something nasty, you're never going to be able to trace an actual rumour back to her. If I woke up tomorrow and people were saying the four of us were involved in some all-girl ménage á quatre, I would bet my last knut that it was Grace who started the rumour -'

'Or Rob,' Dorcas mumbled.

'Well, you know what I mean,' Ze waved off. 'My point is, we would all know it was Grace who said it first, but we'd never be able to prove it because we don't know how she found out about us being out on Tuesday night in the first place. Unless she's learnt to tell the future in that bloody mirror she's always staring at, I don't see how she manages to know everything she knows without ever getting caught out. Or how she manages to start people talking without every seeming to say anything.'

Serena glanced at Lily and Dorcas sheepishly, and then turned her gaze on Ze. 'That I can explain,' she admitted. 'It's sort of…look, being one of Grace's "friends" is sort of like being a handmaiden to the queen – you get to borrow a lot of nice clothes and everyone watches everything you do, but you're only important when she's paying attention to you and you spend all your time knowing other people don't really like you. It's actually the most miserable experience of my life and –'

'And this is why you keep a diary,' Lily interrupted with an impatient roll of her eyes.

Serena expelled a massive breath. 'Right. Sorry. What I was trying to say is that when you're in that position, Grace is the only person who makes you feel important and appreciated. She can be really charming, when she wants to, and you'll tell her anything to make her pay attention to you. And since you know no one else likes you, you don't care that you're telling her all these nasty little things about people, because you know they're doing exactly the same thing to you. And Grace listens, and she nods, and she tells you that this is going to be your little secret, and she goes off to brush her hair. But a week later she's taken something you told her and fitted it together with something someone else has told her, and suddenly she's figured out this massive secret. So she comes along and tells you just enough of what you didn't know to get you to figure it out, and once you know you've got to tell people because it proves how much Grace likes you that you were the one she came and told. And then it's this really horrible rumour that's got started.' Serena's face was shuttered now, and she glumly concluded with, 'And you know it's all your fault.'

Dorcas reached over to pat Serena's shoulder supportively as Ze dragged a hand through her hair and cursed. 'What?' Lily asked quietly.

Ze, elbows planted on knees, lifted her head and shook it. 'Just realising this is going to be complicated. Or, more complicated than I thought. If Grace gets all her information in bits from first-hand sources, that means one – or more - of her little informants has got to be someone we know. Someone we know well,' she groaned. Tapping her thumb against her knee, she tried again to put the facts in some order that made sense – except there didn't seem to be one. 'The only people who knew about that bet were the guys who made it, Clive and me,' she thought aloud. 'We were the only ones…'

'Don't need to ask if any of you told her,' Lily murmured, gazing into the middle distance as she thought. 'What about Clive?' she asked after a moment. 'Could he have told –'

'He doesn't think he said anything Claudia might have picked up on,' Ze interrupted, knowing Lily wouldn't be offended, not when it was the most efficient course. 'And frankly, Claudia's so up her own arse I doubt she would have noticed if he had.'

'What about Zeke and Allister?' Serena asked, surprising them. 'Sorry – I was listening in,' she explained when they both jumped. 'But really, could one of them have told their girlfriends?'

'They did,' Ze affirmed. 'But only after we knew Grace knew. I made them tell Ellie and Riya because I thought Grace would already have started spreading rumours. Same with talking to Clive – I only asked him about Claudia on Monday.'

'And you're sure neither this Ellie or Riya would have known before then?' Dorcas asked sceptically.

'I mean I guess it's possible,' Ze allowed. 'But the fact they demanded I help them go after Grace for threatening their boyfriends indicates they probably aren't keen on telling her secrets.'

'Demanded?' Lily repeated curiously.

Ze shrugged. 'It seems Hufflepuff loyalty extends to the formation of death squads.'

'Good to know,' Serena murmured.

'They're the ones who originally suggested revenge on Grace,' Ze admitted. 'They came to me because they thought I might have a plan. I didn't at that point,' she said in answer to Lily's raised brow.

'But you're going to invite them to join us,' was the redhead's deduction.

'Yeah, if that's okay,' Ze nodded. ''Cos if trying to find Grace's source of information is going to be this complicated, we'll need all the help we can get.'

'I'm telling you,' Serena broke in, 'it won't be just one person. Grace's whole reputation rests on the fact that she's the only one who knows everything – that's the only way she's stayed on top for so long.'

'You make it sound like a military dictatorship,' Ze muttered.

'We're girls,' Serena sneered. 'We're too civilised to stoop to physical combat.' Three heads turned her way, brows arching with the sort of synchronisation usually found in vaudeville tap-dance routines. Serena dug up a credible blush and said, 'Well, you know what I mean.'

Lily snorted, but said, 'So what are we looking for, Oh Wise One?'

'Someone she's pleased with,' was Serena's immediate reply. 'She's always nice to you when you've given her something good. Look for who she sits with at lunch, who she makes a point of talking with between classes – find the ones who look smug.'

'The list of who it could be won't be long,' Ze added, glancing around at her friends. 'It's got to be someone with access to Gryffindor tower, and someone who knows the quidditch team.'

'Not necessarily,' Dorcas pointed out. 'That might be true of whoever told her about the bet, but it could be anyone who saw us Tuesday night.'

'What, someone just happened to be looking out the window at half three in the morning?' Serena snorted.

'McGonagall was,' Dorcas replied, unfazed.

'She's right,' Lily agreed. 'Whoever saw us then could have been anywhere in the castle. Getting up to have a pee, to get a glass of water, to shag her boyfriend in some out-of-the-way corridor – there are a hundred reasons a girl would be out of bed and near a window.'

'That's assuming it was a girl,' was Ze's contribution.

'It will have been a girl,' Serena said darkly. 'Grace always says you can't trust anything a man tells you.'

'You can't trust anything Grace tells you,' Dorcas corrected in acid tones.

'Yeah,' Ze acknowledged, 'but if it had been a boy who saw us there'd be pictures circulating by now.'

Three heads cocked to the side. 'True,' they agreed. 'Sad, but true.'

'So what do we do once we've found this mystery source? Or sources,' Lily added when Serena's mouth snapped open. 'Threaten to feed them to the giant squid?'

Ze jerked slightly, having forgotten that she was supposed to be relaying the plan. Thankfully, this bit should at least be easier to explain. 'We're girls, remember?' she said lightly. 'We're too civilised to stoop to physical combat. And anyway, this will hurt much, much worse…'

*.*.*

When Madame Digweed swept aside the curtains surrounding the bed a half hour later, she nearly leapt out of her skin to discover that there were still four students sequestered inside. 'Merlin's hairy left –' cutting herself off just in time, she wheezed, 'elbow! What are you doing here?!'

Had she not been fighting off the onset of cardiac arrest, she might have noticed that all four pairs of eyes were suspiciously innocent. As it was, Madame Digweed barely blinked when Lily stood and, very politely, said, 'Sorry Miss – we all have a bit of a headache, so we cast a silencing charm on the curtains. We hadn't even noticed everyone else had left.'

'They've all gone back up to bed,' the nurse said, rather redundantly.

'Yes,' Lily said slowly, arching a brow at the empty room. 'So we see. We were just waiting for you to look in on Dorcas's arm – you said you would need to check before she left to be sure the Skele-grow had worked.'

'Oh,' Digweed murmured. 'Of course.' She didn't quite bustle, because women like Hedgepeth Digweed don't bustle, but she did manage to make enough of a fuss to suit even the most sensitive of patients. Dorcas, whose arm had been healed for the better part of two hours, delivered a brilliant performance as the Cringing Invalid, and was discharged into the capable hands of her friends for the long and frightful walk to Gryffindor Tower.

Madame Digweed slammed the doors directly on Ze's heel, and they all heard the snicking of the lock – a definite sign that unless you managed to bleed enough for it to run under the door and across the room to her office, the matron was closed for the night. They waited until they had turned the corner to be sure, but once they were out of sight Dorcas dropped her cradling hold on her arm and three pairs of eyes turned on to Serena.

'Did you get it?' Dorcas hissed. ''Cos I'm not letting her whack me with that hammer again.'

There was a faint clinking of glass and the glimmer of a vial was produced from inside a sleeve, echoing the higher glimmer of teeth in a self-satisfied smile. 'One dose of Somni Soli – guaranteed dreamless sleep.'

'Brilliant,' Ze murmured. 'Who knew larceny was this much fun?'

*.*.*

Lily had fully expected to return to a smoking ruin, and in certain ways Gryffindor tower didn't disappoint. The common room still looked like a war zone, but the fires were out and there were house elves moving efficiently through the wreckage as Professor McGonagall ordered students up the stairs to bed in an effort to keep them out of the way. When the four girls clambered through the portrait hole the deputy headmistress glanced up and exhaled a sharp little sigh.

'Thank heavens,' she said impatiently. 'You're the last ones in. We've been waiting for you Miss Evans,' she added, handing over a list of names which Ze assumed included the whole of Gryffindor house. 'Mr Potter is in charge of recovering lost property and now that you are here to see everyone to their beds I shall see to it that none of the rest of the school has caught fire.'

'We didn't smell any smoke on the way up.' The impertinent words had popped out of Ze's mouth before she could stop them, and the glare they earned her from McGonagall practically left blisters on her nose. 'Right, cheeky comments best kept to self,' Ze mumbled, edging back to allow McGonagall to conclude her conversation – or, rather, dictation – with Lily. Tapestry repair and pixie-rescue weren't terribly interesting subjects, however, and she found her eyes scanning the room. They quickly caught on a group of figures clustered at the base of the boys' stair, and Ze, catching Serena and Dorcas's eyes, cocked her head to indicate that she was walking in that direction. Through the fine haze of smoke in the air Ze could distinguish Peter's sandy locks and the glint of James's glasses; and where there were two Marauders, there must be four. Well, one hoped.

'You alright?' she spoke when she was just behind Peter, nodding to a frowning Remus over the shorter boy's head.

She had expected James to reply with something flippant, but then Peter turned, lower lip quivering dangerously as he said, 'Th-they've taken my socks,' in impossibly mournful tones.

Well of course they've taken them – the Wizengamut is probably drawing up charges of disturbance of the peace and crimes against humanity as we speak. Clearing her throat, Ze decided to go with, 'Ahh, Pete, that's awful.'

'Yeah,' he mumbled, wiping conspicuously at his eyes. 'Still, every battle has its casualties, right?'

'Er, right,' Ze managed, looking confusedly over his head at James and Remus. Both of them just grimaced hopefully back as if to say "anything you can do would be a help". 'Did they, um, did they at least let you say goodbye?'

'Yeah,' was the reply, issued with a jerky nod. 'Yeah, they did. Those socks were my favourite ones, you know?'

It wasn't a question, not really, and even if it had been Ze would have had no idea how to answer it. James and Remus were looking horribly out of their depth, and Ze found herself thinking wildly. 'Well, you know, I, ah, I really don't think the…socks,' she paused to swallow an hysterical giggle, 'would want you to, ah, mourn. You know. They would want you to be strong. Carry on. Chin up.' She punctuated these last thoughts with encouraging pats to the arm.

At last Peter looked up, blue eyes blood-shot and shimmering with unshed tears. 'You think so?' he whispered. If Ze opened her mouth she knew she wouldn't stop laughing for days, so she merely nodded as solemnly as she could. 'Right,' Peter said manfully, drawing himself up. 'Right,' he repeated. 'Chin up. I'm going to bed then,' he added. No one commented on the fact that he had to turn around twice to find the staircase behind him; they were all simply relieved to see him climbing said stairs, a broken man no more.

'Thanks for that,' Remus said with heartfelt gratitude. 'We were beginning to think we'd have to buy flowers.'

Ze waved this off in favour of, 'So they actually caught them then? The socks. Without anyone losing a limb?'

'It was Mrs Norris and Popsy,' James revealed. 'They got them cornered and Filch came in with a butterfly net.'

'A butterfly net?' Ze repeated, her past experience with the socks in question making her a trifle sceptical about this.

'Apparently a previous headmaster crossbred monarchs with manitcores,' Remus shrugged.

'Good thing goblin-forged steel never rusts – although the catapult was a wee bit rough around the gears,' James agreed. 'Worked in the end though. They've been taken to the Department of Mysteries,' he added, flashing an appropriately sinister face, 'or so I heard.'

'Which means he's making it up,' Remus said wryly. 'Although it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to investigate what the hell went wrong with those things.'

'Besides being on Pete's feet for most of last winter? Nothing at all.' James, noticing that Ze was glancing around, obviously looking for someone called Sirius, took pity on her and said, 'He's upstairs. His he- er, he decided he'd go on up so that Pete would have someone to talk to.'

'You were about to say his head's still bothering him,' Ze sighed. And then, feeling slightly embarrassed that she was so transparent where Sirius was concerned, she looked around and realised that, instead of following her, Dorcas and Serena had gone upstairs to bed and that the room was now empty of humans excepting themselves and Lily. 'Looks like everything's pretty much taken care of here,' she said with a shaky smile. And then, because her vocal chords really just seemed in the mood to torture, 'Probably I should go and join Sirius.' The moment her tongue formed the words, she was smacking herself in the head.

Remus swallowed a laugh into a thick, hacking cough.

'I mean, I should probably go to bed with him,' Ze blathered, now completely unable to stop the humiliation. 'Like him. Not his bed, of course - my bed and -' Well aware that her face and ears were practically on fire, she spat out, 'What I'm trying to say is that I should probably do the same. Go to bed, I mean. Like Sirius. So you can tell him that. Not that I'm going to bed – ah, that I'll just catch him up tomorrow.'

'Right,' James said in an odd, tight voice.

'We'll let him know,' Remus added, his mouth twitching madly.

Glowering between them, their amusement as obvious as their ears, Ze just pulled a sneer and said, 'Oh, piss off.' And, leaving her two friends to smirk knowingly after her, stomped off in the direction of her much-mentioned bed.

She had only got halfway across the room though before Lily intercepted her. The head girl simply clamped one wrist in an iron grip and held Ze prisoner as she turned to a house elf to request that the diminutive servant leave abandoned homework assignments for their owners to clean up. Once finished she turned a bright, sharp smile on Ze and said, 'Going somewhere?'

Ze swallowed reflexively. 'Uh – bed?' How had that become a question? Lily arched a brow. Ah – that was how. '…Not to bed?' Ze said, trying a second guess.

'Not until you've told me why Rob is leaving pixies as gifts for you,' Lily agreed politely, leading Ze over to a corner as far from the house elves as possible. Why, Ze thought, can't I make friends with people completely lacking in deductive reasoning skills? 'And don't try to say that it was just random chance it was you,' Lily continued when Ze opened her mouth. 'Sirius wouldn't have told you it was Rob who left them unless it had something to do specifically with you.'

'Look,' Ze said, glancing up the girls' stairs just in case anyone was listening, 'it's really complicated and Dorcas cannot find out, okay?' Lily gave a nod that was as ironclad as a promise and Ze sighed, resisting the urge to pinch away the headache between her brows. 'Rob thinks I'm Madame X.'

'What?' Lily hissed, her grasp around Ze's wrist tightening painfully. 'Sorry, sorry,' she apologised when Ze winced. 'But - what?'

'I know, it's bollocks,' Ze said miserably. 'But he's convinced – to quote his opinion on the subject "who else could it be?"' Shaking her head as her shoulders slumped, Ze added, 'Rob's not stupid, but he's not too keen on deep thinking either.'

'But –'

'But it would kill Dorcas to find out he's mistaken her for me. The thing is, her letters are actually working,' Ze explained earnestly. 'Well, not really – it's not like he's suddenly being nice or anything – but at least he's paying attention. And if I tell him I'm not Madame X then he'll probably decide she's in Ravenclaw or something…'

'Which means no more "gifts" for Dorcas,' Lily murmured, lips pursed in frustration. 'Why are boys so stupid?' There was a pause as this weighty and oft-parsed query floated up towards the ceiling. Just when Ze was expecting a heavenly answer, including punctuation-by-thunderbolt, Lily suddenly said, 'What if we wrote him a note? You know, to say thanks?'

It took a moment for this to sink in, but the further it sank the cleverer it felt. Lily sounded so jubilant Ze couldn't help but catch her enthusiasm. 'What – like "I really enjoyed your little present – glad to know we're evenly matched"? That kind of note?' she asked hopefully.

'Exactly,' Lily nodded, eyes bright. 'Dorcas has been using school owls to deliver the other letters, so we can send it the same way. We'll just have to copy the handwriting – she's using a charm to disguise hers anyway, so that won't be hard. There's no way he'll be able to prove you're the one who sent it, not since we were all upstairs when you "received" his gift.'

For the first time since the pixie cage had exploded Ze felt the knot in her stomach loosen. 'But he'll know someone in our room got the message, so he's aiming in the right direction,' she breathed. 'You, Lily Evans, are the best friend in the world.'

'I know,' Lily agreed. 'Which is why you're going to tell me why you've been avoiding Sirius since you tried to kill him this morning.'

'I didn't try to kill him!' was the immediate – and emphatic – response. When she saw Lily's lips twitch in a smile, Ze sighed and reigned in her temper. 'And I'm not avoiding him – he told me about Rob, remember?'

'Yes, but that was in the heat of battle,' Lily said dismissively. 'Everyone knows the heat of battle is for last confessions, death geases, and emergency marriage proposals. Since he isn't dead and you haven't got a ring, I'm assuming you two didn't cover anything important.'

Ze rolled her eyes, but couldn't help cracking a smile. 'Not by your standards, no. So we're having a chat tomorrow. When there's more time.' And no one can come charging in with a lint roller, she added to herself.

'Ahhhh,' Lily nodded. 'One of those chats.'

'Oh, I don't plan to talk to him for very long,' Ze replied, trying her best to smile mysteriously. She felt her mouth move, but was left with the nagging feeling that she looked a trifle constipated. Clearly, innuendo wasn't her long suit. Lily seemed to agree, because she was looking confused; Ze sighed yet again and clarified. 'Hopefully he won't argue when I say "I'm about to snog you", so the conversation bit should be over fairly quickly.' She didn't mention that she was hoping to leave a bit of free time after in case Sirius decided that running away screaming was an even better idea than arguing. If that happened, she was definitely going to need some time alone to figure out how to cast Obliviate on herself.

And if he didn't run away – or argue (well, too strenuously) – she was planning on finding out what he looked like naked. That is, if she didn't lose her bottle. Or get pecked to death by a revenge-seeking bluebird. Or – okay, probably she should just save herself time and cast the Obliviate now. Oh, wait, must tell Lily what to inscribe on the grave marker –

'Right, well, glad you got that worked out,' Lily was saying cheerfully, her tone completely at odds with the look in her eye as she stared across the common room. 'Now be a dear and go to bed so there aren't any witnesses when I decide to kill Potter.'

Hm – so not the time to mention the epitaph. Maybe she would just write it down and carry it in her pocket; also, a copy of her will. Memo: write will. Glancing across the room, Ze noted that Remus was toiling up the stairs towards his bed, and so she nodded, smiled at Lily, and faked a massive yawn. Which then turned into a real yawn, causing her to pant in a most undignified way once it was over, as she hadn't been prepared for that sort of oxygen deprivation. 'Ngh-night,' she coughed, and went racing up the stairs.

Below her, Lily earned full marks for a mysterious smile as she stared across the room at James Potter. So no sex for weeks, eh? Ooooh, but revenge was going to be sweet…

*.*.*

Sirius slept well.

Perhaps it was knowing that Peter's socks had been taken away in chains to be interrogated and subsequently unravelled. Maybe it was the fact that Grace was about to get a taste of her own medicine. Or it could be the memory of wide eyes and hastily licked lips, of the way Ze's breath had caught when she'd known he was about to kiss her. Not that he'd thought about it. Or dreamed about it. Or considered purchasing a pensieve just so he could keep the memory fresh and forever.

Unfortunately, James didn't seem to be faring so well. 'Evil,' he was mumbling, his eyes still shut in spite of the fact that he was well out of bed. 'Evil evil evil – '

Sirius reached over and snatched away the shirt James was presently attempting to don in lieu of his trousers. 'The socks are gone,' he said soothingly. 'McGonagall promised.'

James's eyes snapped open at the sound of Sirius's voice, but his gaze didn't focus. 'All that skin,' he whispered. 'Bends over and all that skin….So white and so evil, evil, evil…'

Sirius stared as James wandered off toward the toilet, wearing only his socks, shorts, and fully knotted tie. 'Does he have an audition for Eros's All-Wizard Revue, or am I just missing something?' Sirius asked a freshly-showered Remus.

Rather than a pithy comment or a bit of ageless wisdom, the only answer this received was a surly grunt. If James had approached dressing as a form of minimalist expression, Remus obviously considered it anger management therapy. The sandy haired boy was all but karate chopping his clothes as he jerked them on, somehow managing to connote furious frustration merely by doing up the buttons on his shirt. 'Right,' Sirius mumbled. 'So it's one of those days. Again.'

*.*.*

Ze had expected it to be one of those days. Again. And it was – but at least she wasn't in it alone. In Transfiguration Lily earned a reprimand for not paying attention…because she was shooting come-hither glances (there was really no other way to say it) at James Potter. James had got his reprimand for falling out of his seat just a few minutes later. His excuse, when asked, was that he had been trying to look up Lily's skirt. He'd be out of detention in roughly six months. In Potions, Remus was actually called down – a first in seven years! – for talking back to Slughorn when the professor commented on his work. Serena got a lapful of juice at lunch and Dorcas had to stay after in Charms to be cured of the Incurable Hiccoughs. Professor Flitwick had apologised for mispronouncing the spell during his demonstration, but it hadn't made drinking three litres of water upside down any easier.

Not that Ze really noticed any of this. She was too busy avoiding windows and writing death threats to the Brothers Grimm. It started in Transfiguration, when a puffy, fluffy, unreasonably cute chipmunk darted onto the ledge of the window just beside Ze's desk. She might not have noticed it if hadn't started knocking on the windowpane with one dainty paw. Staring in horror, Ze had looked out at that furry little face with its bright black eyes and thought I am going to kill myself. And after that, I'm never taking the seat by the windows again.

Thankfully, the chipmunk was a solo performer - those contortions had to be either extreme epilepsy or interpretive dance – but it wasn't precisely inconspicuous. Neither were the bunnies that followed her out of the greenhouses, or the squirrels that formed a can-can line outside the Divination window. Ze didn't think anyone had seen her bludgeon the screech owl with her juice goblet at lunch, and she was frankly too disturbed to care. Had she been sentient enough to notice, she would have been rejoicing over her friends' bad luck – mostly because it would mean they weren't paying any attention to hers.

Somehow Ze made it to quidditch training without being arrested by an animal rights group, and these days that was a fair showing. Courtesy of a few well-aimed curses on her way down to the pitch, the rabbits had departed to groom their singed tails and the squirrels were likely rethinking their position on French line dancing. By the time Ze had mounted her broom she was even beginning to feel that the "cross me and I'll hex you to buggery!" she'd shouted to any birds within a twelve mile radius might have been overkill. Quidditch, it seemed, was a sacred place, free of the trials and tribulations that plagued ordinary life.

Then Clive failed to grace them with his presence. Everyone looked to James for a proper team captain shit-fit, but James (who seemed to actually be wearing his training gear over top of his school uniform) had simply said, 'If he pulls this on Saturday, I'll feed his balls to a doxy nest,' and got on with things. At that moment Ze had been fifty feet in the air, and from that vantage point had had a very nice view indeed of the ring of small furry animals closing in on the quidditch pitch. Staring at the ranks of bunnies and chipmunks and fawns (were deer even breeding at this time of year? didn't that defy the Laws of Nature or something?) picking their merry way through the vertiginous verge of the not-so-aptly-named Black Forest, she thought, I could probably make it look like an accident. A Wronksi Feint gone really Wronski.

This thought was more or less the last stand of sanity before the red haze of frustrated rage set in. Taking her aggressions out on the game, she flew with the sort of frenzy even a shark in a bathing pool might envy. Within minutes, the rest of the squad were just doing their best to keep out of her way. Rob, bless him, thought she was flirting – at least, right up until she broom-tackled him into a goal hoop. He was slightly worried by the level of physical violence for about half a minute, and then he recalled that girls always found ways to touch the guy they fancied. He just wished Ze hadn't been quite so affectionate: it was going to be murder getting Madame Digweed to put those teeth back in.

James, who was too busy attempting to untangle his school robes from his broom bristles, missed most of the fray, and so practise ended when Ze divebombed a small white rabbit hopping innocently across the pitch, missed by a hair, and tumbled off her broom and onto the ground. She was up and on her feet before any of the others could land, and they wisely allowed her to stalk off (muttering murderously under her breath) towards her shower without interfering. When James – his alertness somewhat restored by a quaffle blow directly between the eyes – emerged from the changing rooms after his shower, it was to find Sirius staring perplexedly into the distance. Slightly confused by both his friend's befuddled expression and physical presence, he meandered over, saying, 'What're you still doing here – I would have thought you'd be off with Ze by now.'

Sirius slowly shook his head, still absorbed in a sight further along the footpath leading to the castle. 'Not just yet,' he mumbled cryptically.

James, ever the quickest of fishes, said, 'Well someone's got to calm her down before she gets her hands on a battle axe, and you know none of the rest of us can do it.'

This time Sirius's head moved slowly in a nod. 'Yeah,' he said musingly. 'Thought I'd give her a bit of space first…'

Finally James could take it no longer: praying he wasn't about to get an eyeful of Rob pissing into the underbrush, he turned to follow the direction of Sirius's gaze. The sight that greeted him had his feet reflexively taking a step back even as his head moved forward to give his eyes a closer look. Some way ahead on the path Ze was stomping her way back toward the castle, her steps dogged by…animals. More specifically, James's confuddled brain finally managed, by a crowd of assorted woodland creatures. The small white rabbit was back, along with what looked like an entire warren of cousins, and there was a skipping, jumping horde of squirrels; a small flock of birds twittered and swooped around the ears of a gangly-legged fawn while a pair of fox cubs darted playfully round a badger and – sweet Circe – was that a yeti?

Every few steps Ze would whirl round and wave her arms manically as she shouted at the menagerie following her along. James and Sirius were stood too far back to catch anything except echoes, but the words "fuck" and "off" seemed to recur with alarming frequency. As James watched the fox cubs – in a daring if idiotic manoeuvre – scampered forward and mischievously wove their way through Ze's legs as she walked. This proved to be too much. Throwing her bag to the ground, Ze swept out her wand and attempted to decapitate the nearest furry bundle of joy. Predictably, the foxes gambolled out of the way, thinking this was some new game. Ze, roaring unintelligibly, discarded her wand and snatched up a handful of rocks, hurling them with almost as much violent vim as the curses spewing out of her mouth.

But there weren't enough pebbles in all of Scotland to satisfy her rage, and the farce soon escalated: Ze, having laid hands on a sturdy yew branch, was swinging away like a demented cricket player batting in hell, aiming for everything from birds to Bambi as she chased the foxes and a limbo line of rabbits in an endless circle, kicking wildly at anything on four legs as she went. 'I'll kill you all, you bloody rodents!' she was shouting at the top of her voice. 'I'll tear you limb from limb!'

From the relative safety of a hillside away, James nodded slowly. 'Yeah – space might be nice…'

*.*.*

When she reached the abandoned Alchemy classroom on the sixteenth floor of the North-North-Southwest tower, Ze was the picture of calm (that is, if Calm happened to pant breathlessly as though it had just climbed a marathon's worth of stairs). It was cathartic, really, to let all the anger out. Almost Zen. Well, it probably wasn't Zen to run screaming after defenceless bunny rabbits, but it had still felt right. If the way that yeti had gone pounding into the trees was any indication, she wouldn't be facing any more torture from the Friends of the Forest. And if she did, she could always borrow the Staff for Warding Off Unexpected Wildlife from Dorcas in a pinch.

Smiling the smile of the recently avenged, Ze pushed the door to the classroom open and found herself enveloped in a cloud of dust. Over the sound of her own violent coughing she could just manage to hear Lily's voice say, 'It isn't even clever.'

'Clever?' Ze croaked, feeling her way blindly away from the doorframe as she tried valiantly not to inhale.

'Someone's charmed the door so that whoever opens it gets an entire face full of dust,' Serena explained, coming forward to press a damp flannel into Ze's grasping hand.

'Security measure,' Lily said wisely. 'Alchemy's fiddly stuff, so anything that would discourage people from coming through the door must've seemed like a good idea.'

'Yeah, but what about the alchemists?' Ze hacked daintily, waving a hand to indicate the hanging haze. 'How could anyone see through all this to work?'

'That would definitely explain why they were always blowing themselves up,' Lily murmured.

Serena brushed at the shoulders of her robes and glanced at Ze. 'You're sure you gave them proper directions?'

Swiping the last of the dust from her face, Ze had a moment of confusion, thinking Serena was referring to the long-exploded alchemists. 'Oh,' she shook herself, realisation dawning. 'Yeah – I gave them the same directions Lily gave me. They ought to be here any –'

Creak…poooof. 'Ughghg – bollocks!'

'What the –'

Once the dust was disposed of, Ze pretended the moment wasn't terribly awkward and made introductions. 'Lily, Serena, this is Riya and Ellie – they're Zeke and Allister's girlfriends…'

There was quite a lot of lip-pursing and sizing-up as the four girls circled one another like prize fighters for a good ten seconds. Pleasantries taken care of, Riya and Ellie folded their arms in unison and set their ear-rings swinging as they tilted their heads. 'So what's this about?'

'The note said you had a proposition to make – '

'And we assumed what you meant was what we talked about before –'

'But we thought we were meant to come up with the plan,' Riya finished.

Lily looked ready to make arrests over the grievous assault of proper syntax, and Serena's eyes were still darting back and forth in tennis match mode. So it isn't just me, Ze thought, relieved, and proceeded to reply. 'I have got a proposition, and it is about what we talked about before, and I've managed to come up with a plan so I thought I might see if you were interested.'

Heavily-lined eyes exchanged a glance. 'And the head girl just happens to want to help out of the badness of her heart?' Ellie asked sceptically.

'Look, just because I'm supposed to stop other people getting into trouble doesn't mean I don't get into it myself,' Lily said bluntly. 'We're all here because we loathe and despise Grace Harper – and since my taking house points from her won't solve the problem, we've had to come up with something else.'

'Yeah?' Riya said, looking only marginally mollified by this. 'What's your plan then?'

Realising that they were only going to have one chance to convince the two Hufflepuffs (since when was suspicion one of their house traits?) to join ranks, Ze put it as simply as possible. 'We're going to systematically destroy Grace from the inside out.'

'With what, a dung bomb pie?'

Serena grinned. 'Close, but not quite. We're going to find out every last one of her naughty little secrets and torture her with them until she's a great weepy blob of acute paranoia.'

At the mention of the word "torture" two sets of ears perked up. 'That's not bad,' Riya said slowly, her voice warming. 'Publicly humiliate the conniving slag – '

'Just like she's done to everyone else,' Ellie finished off.

Lily, Ze and Serena exchanged a glance. 'Not so much public humiliation –' Lily began, only to be interrupted by the door creaking open.

'Mind the –' three voices chorused, only to stop mid-warning as Dorcas stepped into the room without so much as a puff of dust raining down.

'That just isn't fair,' Serena mumbled.

'What's she doing here?'

It wasn't so much hostility as confusion that coloured the tone, but Ze still felt the need to make amends – particularly as the two Hufflepuffs were looking ready to whip out their wands at the next sign of ambush. 'This is Dorcas Andrews. Dorcas, Riya and Ellie – Zeke and Allister's –'

'Girlfriends,' Dorcas nodded. 'Pleasure,' she added with a stiff nod, purple bow bobbing.

'Dorcas isn't keen on Grace either,' Serena explained. 'Actually, we can't think of anyone who is – which is why there are six of us going in together on this. Well, we hope there'll be six of us – if the two of you agree, that is.'

Riya and Ellie exchanged another glance. 'You want to know if you can trust us?'

'Before you tell us anything else?'

'Basically yeah,' Ze said honestly. 'If you'd rather not get involved that's fine, no harm done.'

'But we could definitely use the help,' Lily added, leaning back against an abandoned desk. 'Our plan isn't exactly simple or easy, and we're going to need eyes and ears everywhere if it's going to work.'

'Speaking of which,' Serena said, turning to Dorcas, 'any news?'

'In the Restricted Section with Sophie Andros's boyfriend,' Dorcas nodded, holding up a chunky black apparatus Ze recognised as Serena's Polaroid camera (for "honest ensemble opinions and other fashion quandaries"). 'Evidence gathered.'

'You can see their faces?' Lily asked immediately.

'His,' Dorcas confirmed. 'And you can't miss her hair.'

'Wait, are you photographing Grace snogging someone else's bloke?' There was clear admiration in Ellie's eyes now, all hint of derision gone as the younger girl eyed Dorcas. When the be-bowed Gryffindor just nodded regally, she said, 'That's brilliant.'

'All part of the plan,' Lily said slyly, winking at Ze, who could practically hear the redhead thinking, cast and caught.

'So what precisely is the plan?' Riya enquired.

'Obviously, we're in,' Ellie nodded.

'Ze?' Serena prompted when no one immediately began to explain.

'Right,' Ze said, faintly nervous at having to be the one to do the talking. 'Well, as Serena's just said, we need to know as much about Grace as possible – everything from her Potions mark to how many people's boyfriends she's taken. The problem is, while Grace seems to know everything about everyone, no one seems to actually know anything about Grace.'

Another Hufflepuff Shuffle look. 'Minions,' Ellie and Riya said together in tones of deepest contempt.

'You know about them?' Serena asked, surprised.

'S'not hard to work out, is it?' Riya snorted.

'Bitchiest girl at school, but she's never caught doing the dirty work?' Ellie shook her head. 'Pathetic.'

'Pathetic or not, it works,' Ze said flatly. 'And we're going to have to do something about that if we want to bring her down.'

'Who cares about the Shazzas?' Ellie said impatiently. 'They're going to gossip not matter what you do.'

'Yes, but we can't have them gossiping to Grace, can we?' Serena pointed out. 'Our having information on Grace will only be effective if she hasn't got anything to fire back with.'

'Ergo, the loyalties of her minions must be changed,' Dorcas nodded, settling the camera onto a desk and crossing her arms to mirror Riya and Ellie's poses. 'None of them actually like Grace, they just flock to her because she's the oldest and the sneakiest. It's a "girl thing."'

'Our plan is a two-prong offensive measure,' Lily said, taking up the thread. 'The first tine on the fork, if you will, is dismantling Grace's information network. We've done a bit of thinking and come up with a list of names – mostly just the people she thinks of as "friends".'

'None of whom,' Serena broke in, 'can stand the sight of one another. It's one of Grace's oldest tricks, playing them off of one another –'

'Because as long as they're fighting amongst themselves,' Dorcas murmured, 'they're too busy to be going after her.'

'If they could call a ceasefire long enough to see that it's Grace who's sowing the seeds of enmity, they'd be the perfect allies,' Ze explained, noticing that is was now Riya and Ellie who were having trouble working out who was saying what. 'The second list – the one we're in the process of making – is of all the people, the proverbial small fish, who give Grace her information. We know at least one of them is a Gryffindor because how else would she have found out about the bet, right?'

'We've been thinking about that,' Riya nodded, dark eyes narrowed.

There was a pause. Serena finally prodded with, 'And?'

Ellie gave her a look as if to say, 'isn't there medication you can take for that?' 'And we haven't come up with anything.'

'Well, we haven't either,' Ze hastened to say, before a Situation could develop. 'And that's what we'd like your help with. You've got house connections with any Hufflepuffs who might be passing things along, and you also know the younger students a bit better than we do.'

'I don't know if either of you are friendly with Bridgette Carey,' Lily added, 'but she's one of the names on that first list – the one of Grace's friends.'

There was a joint shrug from the Hufflepuff contingent. 'Fifth year,' Riya said with a shrug.

'Cow,' was Ellie's contribution.

'So that's a no. Right, well, we haven't quite decided – ' read: figured out, Ze thought wryly, 'how to get Bridgette and the rest to keep their mouths shut, but Serena's working on it.' The look Riya and Ellie shot the brunette Gryffindor didn't have much in the way of confidence; Serena shoved her nose into the air and pretended not to care. 'We're asking you to do two things. The first is to keep your eyes and ears open – in class, in the corridors, in the toilet. We need to know where Grace's information comes from, who she talks to, when she talks to them, and where. We're going to sort out the Gryffindor feeding her information, but she's got more than one source and we want to know them all. The second thing is to keep an eye on Bridgette and anyone else in your house you think might be a problem. If you can talk with them without it looking weird, do it – you don't have to become their new best friend or anything, but casual acquaintances won't hurt.'

'We're hoping to start a shift in power,' Lily explained, using the phrase Serena had coined to aptly the night before in hospital. 'If you can get to the point where you can casually drop hints to your new friends, we'll be able to start a coup without firing a single shot.' No, thought Ze, no guns needed – not when we're belly crawling through the grass, slitting throats and hamstringing people in the silence of the night…. 'There's always going to be a hierarchy of popularity,' Lily was saying. 'We can't do anything about that – but we can take Grace out of it.'

'As soon as people like Bridgette Carey and Ffiona Fforde smell a change in the wind, they'll be clawing to come out on top,' Serena added. 'And if we offer to dispose of Grace for them, they're not going to ask any questions about how it happens.'

'So we just watch and chat people up,' Riya summarised sceptically.

'For now,' Ze nodded, expecting the younger girl to tell her to get stuffed, they'd come up with their own plan.

But all she got was a snappy nod and a 'Done,' said so vehemently she half expected Ellie to spit into her palm and hold it out for a shake.

'So what's the second prong on this fork?' Riya asked.

'Tine,' came Dorcas's voice. 'Forks have tines.'

'Whatever,' Ellie said sneeringly. 'What is it?'

'The second prong – tine,' Lily corrected herself, 'is the part where we go after Grace herself. We're going to gather as much information as possible – there's no way she can be so horrible without there being proof of it somewhere.'

'So what are you going to do, go through her knicker drawer looking for incriminating evidence?' was the facetious snigger.

'Well,' Serena said sheepishly, 'yeah.'

There was a long pause. Finally: 'You're joking.' When no one spoke up, Ellie swept a disbelieving gaze over them. 'You're really going to go through her stuff?'

'It isn't precisely honest,' Ze admitted, 'but then we're holding a secret meeting in an abandoned, booby-trapped classroom miles from anyone who might want to listen in – honest doesn't really apply.'

'But what do you honestly think you're going to find?' was Riya's question. 'A signed and dated confession, Dear World, I did it all?'

Lily and Serena exchanged a glance. 'Apparently Grace keeps trophies,' the redhead explained, and Ze's thoughts instantly flew to Sirius's t-shirt. 'Like a stamp collector.'

'Or a serial killer,' Serena muttered.

'The point is, there should be something - letters, keepsakes, anything really – that will give us a starting point,' Lily continued. 'We're going to talk to people as well – I'm going to see if any of the prefects has noticed Grace doing anything suspicious, and Ze's going to interrogate her ex-boyfriend.'

When Riya and Ellie turned surprised glances her way, Ze shrugged and did her best not to blush. 'Grace used to date Sirius Black – he might remember her doing or saying something we'd find useful.'

'We're fairly certain the majority of our information will eventually come from Grace's so-called friends,' Serena admitted. 'But they won't turn on her unless they can be sure she won't be coming back, so we're going to have to have something really fab – something convincing. Once we've got it, we'll be able to approach them and – hopefully – cut Grace off from her own army.'

'Just in case we don't find anything though, Dorcas is covering current events,' Lily concluded, nodding to Dorcas and her camera. 'The only thing we've got on film so far is Grace the Slag with a cheating boyfriend, but that's bound to be just the tip of the iceberg.'

Riya and Ellie were nodding slowly, their eyes full of begrudging respect. 'And I thought Slytherins were nasty.'

'Crossing someone without morals or a conscience is dangerous,' Dorcas said lightly. 'Crossing someone with loyalties to protect is just bloody stupid.'

The Gryffindors were used to Dorcas's little pearls of wisdom, but Ellie and Riya swallowed nervously in unison. Taking pity on them, Ze changed the subject. 'People will be less nervous talking with you if they don't think of you as being friends with us – it's sort of obvious we don't rate Grace, so keep your distance from us in public.'

'Right – the friend of my boyfriend is my enemy,' Riya nodded. Ze felt as though one of life's larger mysteries had just been explained – at least, for girls who were frequently friends with boys.

'That about covers it, I think,' Lily nodded. 'I've got to go meet Elena Jameson for patrols.' Serena grinned: Lily had spent most of the morning restructuring the patrolling timetables so that she would be paired with anyone who might know something unsavoury about Grace. 'I'll meet you back in the dormitory, yeah?'

Ze nodded. 'I'm going to have a chat to the guys about not telling them what's going on and then we're having a nice cup of tea before we go to bed.'

Serena and Dorcas both grinned wolfishly at this, and Ellie said, 'Tea?'

'With a bit of sleeping potion in it, if you're Grace,' Dorcas replied. 'We've all agreed she deserves a nice night's sleep.'

'Especially since we'll be mucking through her things,' Serena agreed cheerfully. 'I wanted to Stun her,' she confessed with a toss of her hair. 'But Lily said nothing that would leave visible marks.'

*.*.*.*.*

Riya and Ellie, newly disabused of their notions of Gryffindor kindness, had practically fled the classroom. Ze, who had requested that they not discuss the plan with Zeke or Allister, was relatively confident that the two girls would prove quite useful – if Dorcas and Serena didn't scare them off with poisoned tea and military metaphors. She was presently walking back towards the Gryffindor common room with Serena, Lily having departed for her patrol duty and Dorcas having returned to the library to complete her "research". No one had ever got up the courage to ask her just what she was researching – they only knew that it didn't involve schoolwork. Ze had a sneaking suspicion Dorcas was hatching schemes to take over the world via subliminal messages and potion-infused sweets, but had decided the best way to stay on the future dictator's good side was to not ask any questions until she was invited to.

In the meantime, she had bigger things to think about – like how she was going to start up a conversation about Grace with Sirius. Predictably, the only ideas she could come up with were complete rubbish: what was she supposed to say, "I'd really like to get your clothes off and lick chocolate off your stomach…but could we talk about your ex-girlfriend first?" Yeah, brilliant – exactly the sort of thing that would get her a one-way ticket to spinsterhood and a houseful of cats. Although, given the way birds and bunnies and bloody squirrels had taken to following her around, the cats might not be a bad idea…

'Ohmygod.'

The words were spoken so quietly Ze wouldn't have heard them if she hadn't been colliding with Serena's back as they were being formed. Without paying any attention at all, she had followed Serena through the portrait hole and into the common room, and would probably have followed her straight up the stairs to the dormitory if Serena hadn't decided to imitate a devoutly religious wall with no warning. 'What?' she asked, only it came out more like "whghghg", and she had to spit out a mouthful of glossy mahogany locks to repeat the question. Her only answer was a faint, desperate moan. Suddenly afraid that Serena might be having some sort of fit brought on by an excess of nerves, fears and hair products, she stepped around her friend to see what the matter was.

But before she could get a good look at Serena, she was distracted by one Very Important Thing: Remus Lupin was gorgeous.

Not boyishly good-looking or bookishly cute, but gorgeous – the kind of fit that leans against the bar with a packet of fags rolled in its sleeve, sneering as if to say "Yeah, that's my motorbike – what about it?"

'Oh,' she said, because now that she was standing even with Serena he was directly in her line of sight and she couldn't have looked away if she'd had one of Pete's socks bearing down on her. 'Oh.'

With sleeves rolled back and tie dragged loose, his jaw shadowed by stubble a subtle shade darker than his hair, Remus was sat on the settee in a pheromone-soaked sprawl, posture belying the tension crackling off his skin. In the firelight his features took on a slightly dangerous cast, the flickering light deepening the hollows of his face and darkening his heavily mussed hair. He looked just naughty enough to be nice, the kind of boy who only needs a bit of love and a lot of loving to save. Every female eye in the room was locked on him, girls surreptitiously licking their lips as though he were something delicious topped with whipped cream. And that fantasy would only require a trip to the kitchens.

Even as she berated herself for thinking that about Remus, Ze was turning to Serena to murmur, 'Who knew all that was hiding under –'

But she broke off when she got a good look at her friend's face, her voice dying off as she watched Serena…transform. There really wasn't any other way to put it: it happened right in front of her eyes, the change skimming down Serena's body until you couldn't imagine her looking any other way. Her hair was wilder and her lips were fuller and her eyes seemed to glitter with a lazy promise that radiated heat. Her posture shifted, and somehow she was suddenly sprawled languidly across a bed despite the fact she was standing straight up on two feet. Her head flicked and a wave of hair cascaded over her shoulders, a sleek, feline smile playing across her mouth.

'Serena?' Ze asked hesitantly, wondering if she should issue a warning about copulatory gazes in front of first years.

But she knew it was hopeless the moment Serena stepped forward and said, 'I think I feel a sin coming on.'

*.*.*

Remus Lupin was on the brink of exploding. He'd always given himself top marks in Self Denial, but lately he was wondering if all that practise had even made a difference. He had no idea how Sirius and James were managing to behave so normally. Well, actually, he did have an idea: they weren't werewolves. It was the bloody full moon. For Remus the problem was always the bloody full moon – and this time it was unbearable because he could smell everything. And there were loads of girls in everything – delicious and enticing and they got right up his nose - literally and figuratively.

Just being in the common room was torture, but he didn't trust himself to be alone. If he was alone he would do something he would regret, and he'd swallow silver bullets for England before he lost the bet without the pleasure of female company. Which meant he would be spending every waking moment enjoying the safety of numbers. Just not female numbers. Female numbers were dangerous and evil and out for –

Knees.

Knees, just there, close enough for him to reach out and touch, if he could manage to convince his beleaguered brain to outstretch a hand. Smooth, delicate, feminine knees, pale above the socks that stretched up over the calves. Lovely knees, just there in the middle of lovely legs, which bled into lovely hips and a lovely waist and really lovely –

'Hello Remus.'

His eyes, clouded and dazed, pupils blooming out to nearly obliterate the blue, travelled desperately toward the source of that voice. It was not a good face. It was a gorgeous, sultry, come-hither face atop a gorgeous, sultry, come-hither body and all Remus could say was, 'Nggghghh.'

She didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed to think this was a perfectly acceptable line, because that dangerous smile curled tighter and suddenly Remus had no trouble forming the word fuck in his head. He probably should have taken the time to bemoan the fact that his longest-standing dream had wormed its way into his current nightmare, but he didn't have a chance. A hand, slender and graceful and sinfully alluring, appeared before his face, beckoning him on without moving at all. He knew he was an idiot and he knew he would regret it and he knew that if he had any sort of honour at all he would keep staring at those knees until she melted back into his fantasies. But her knees were just as gorgeous as the rest of her and that was really the crux of the problem. He heaved a shuddering sigh of relief as he reached out to take her hand.

*.

From her vantage point by the entryway, Ze watched Serena, smiling secretly over her shoulder, lead a dazed and hungry-looking Remus up the stairs toward the boys' dormitories and realised two things: the first, that she should just stuff this plan business and do the same thing to Sirius. And the second, that the boy Serena fancied did, in fact, know she existed.

'Are they doing a bit of revision, or did she just invite him to play mediwizard?'

The sound of Sirius's voice startled her, and she turned to face him, a cheeky comment on the tip of her tongue. She swallowed it down, though, because she didn't really want to invite James and Peter to play mediwizards as well. The three boys had migrated in her direction as the entire common room watched Serena and Remus disappear, eyes wide and mouths gaping. The moment the door to the boys' seventh could be heard closing a wave of chatter rolled across the room; Serena, it seemed, had just confirmed her reputation in one go. 'Just putting him out of his misery – she's a very charitable girl, Serena,' Ze murmured.

'Out of his –' James began, aghast. 'You mean she knows about the –'

'Bet?' Ze finished, voice low and eyebrow high.

'You told her?' Peter gaped. 'You told?'

'It was the only way to explain what was going on between me and Grace,' Ze replied patiently.

'What's going on between you and Grace?' James asked blankly.

Ze turned to Sirius. 'You didn't mention that I might be seeking swift and terrifying revenge?'

'You weren't too clear on it when you told me,' Sirius shrugged. 'Didn't think it was something you wanted me to mention to anyone else.'

Ze considered this for a moment, and then eyed James and Peter. 'Well, I was coming to find you,' she finally said to Sirius. 'And I was going to have you tell them anyway, so –'

'Tell us what?'

Sighing, Ze glanced around and then tilted her head in the direction of the hidden alcove she and Sirius had sheltered in the night before. 'Come on then.' Leading the way, she ducked through the break in the tapestries and was relieved to find the tight space empty. 'Bit of a squeeze,' she said apologetically as the three boys crushed themselves in after her.

'Tell us what?' James repeated.

'Tell you that there's going to be a bit of tension with us seventh year girls. Well, there's going to be tension between Grace and the rest of us seventh year girls,' she amended. 'So you shouldn't worry if you hear screaming.'

'What, are you going to start a prank war?' Peter asked, aiming for curious and hitting somewhere around pantswettingly scared.

'Not quite,' Ze hedged.

'Well what's your plan then?' Sirius asked, confused at the deliberately vague answer.

'That I am not going to tell you,' was the cryptic reply.

'What?'

'Why not?' Sirius demanded, right on the heels of James's outburst.

'Because if anyone asks you what's going on, you'll be able to honestly say you don't know,' Ze said firmly. 'And if things get out of hand Veritaserum could be involved, so don't I'm just putting you off – the fewer people who know the details, the better.'

The three boys exchanged a look, mouths open to disagree. And then James said, 'Er, when you say tension between "you girls" and Grace, is Lily perchance involved?'

'We all are,' Ze said succinctly. 'And that's all I'm saying.'

'That's all you need to say,' James mumbled.

'Look, how can we help you if we don't know –' Sirius began.

'You aren't going to help us,' Ze interrupted, but her voice was gentle. 'This is a girl thing, Sirius – let us settle it, right?'

There was a tense moment as they watched one another, but Sirius subsided – still looking rather unhappy about it all. 'Are we supposed to keep this a secret?' Peter asked to break the tension. 'Because I think the rest ought to know as well.'

Ze shrugged. 'I'd prefer you not mention it to Rob or Allister or Zeke if you can help it. Serena will probably fill Remus in.'

'Yeah, after he's filled her in,' James sniggered with uncouth glee. Everyone else froze. Taking in their expressions – ranging from petrified-in-shock to I've-just-vomited-in-my-mouth – he grimaced. 'Too soon?'

'Never would have been too soon, Prongs,' Sirius said in tones of deepest revulsion.

'Sorry,' James said contritely, doing his best to look like the last sort of person to make jokes in questionable taste. Pasting on his Sincere Face, he looked back to Ze. 'So you just wanted to tell us that you weren't going to tell us anything?'

'No,' Ze immediately replied, shaking her head in turn. 'Sorry. Got distracted. Anyway – what I wanted to say is that in…working out our strategies, we've realised that Grace seems to know a lot of things she really shouldn't. Like the fact she knew about the bet. Which means someone we know – someone in Gryffindor – is passing her information.'

'Passing her information?' James snorted. 'You make it sound like a spy network.'

'That's basically what it is,' Sirius muttered, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.

Peter gulped and looked back and forth between Ze and James. 'How can you be sure? Couldn't she have just overheard us talking or something?'

Ze shook her head. 'Grace doesn't listen in on conversations – she's much too busy and important. And she's got people to do it for her. What we're going to do is figure out who those people are…'

*.*.*

Remus had always known his conscience was going to be the death of him, but today was really taking the biscuit. He could smell her and taste her and - and –

But it was wrong. So completely wrong. She didn't know what she was getting into, and she couldn't know, and this was always going to be a mess but he'd rather imagined it would be a mess with someone he didn't really care about. And now all he could think about was that he knew what her favourite colour was and he'd read her favourite book and he was about to take her clothes off – well, the rest of them off – and he'd never offered to tell her the same things about himself. And he never would. Because one confidence invited another, and it had to stop somewhere.

Preferably, the acidic little voice he hated so much said, before you get her out of her knickers.

He had to stop this. He always had to stop this. If his conscience had its way, he'd never get more than halfway through making a cup of tea because he always had to bloody stop. Before it was too late. Before someone found out. Before he and Serena… Well, the point was, he wasn't supposed to be here.

Somehow he managed to pull away, although it wasn't really away, it was just further back against the bed, and he knew that wasn't where he was supposed to be either. 'Serena,' he panted desperately, catching her shoulder to hold her back. 'Serena, I really think this is a bad idea.'

She was pushed up half on one elbow, her skin already sheening with sweat, her breathing as erratic as his own. 'I think it's a bad idea too,' she said, and he felt her thumb tugging against the flesh of his lower lip as it skimmed down his jaw. 'But at least we aren't acting without thinking.'

Aside from being tragically trite, this argument in no way involved logic. But one didn't need logic, Remus discovered, when one could merely smother one's opponent with one's hair. One's long, gorgeous, silky – and that was his hands in, and if his hands were there his mouth might as well be and really, if she was going to do that he ought to return the favour… And then she was pressing as far into the bed as he was and he realised that if the universe got any more serious about telling him not to stop, Serena was going to tear his clothes off with her teeth. So when he felt her incisors close around his collar he rolled them over and admitted to himself that he'd been wanting this for years, and that if he could learn to ride a bicycle he could bloody well learn to do this, too.

A half hour later, breathless and ebullient, Serena beamed at the ceiling and said, 'So that's what all the fuss is about.'

*.*.*

Below in the common room's Top Secret Alcove, Sirius was feeling heartily glad that Hogwarts was built of stern – and thick - stuff. Not that he begrudged Remus the right to shout obscenities or break bed-frames or anything else that might happen in the heat of the moment – he was just eternally thankful he didn't have to hear it. Doubly thankful, because he was standing next to Ze and he was fairly certain now was not the time to be getting ideas. Mostly because she was talking. Very seriously. He could tell because she was tapping her index finger against her thumb and she had that little line between her brows she always got when she was being serious.

Unfortunately, he hadn't really been listening for that last bit.

So when she said, 'All we need you to do is watch – we'll take care of the rest,' Sirius had no idea what he was supposed to be watching.

'So you just want us to keep an eye on who talks to Grace?' Oh bless you Prongs, bless you and your uberperceptive Best Mate Arse-Saving Sense…

'Yeah,' Ze said slowly, and for a moment she sounded so suspicious Sirius was sure she'd caught on to the fact that he hadn't been paying attention. 'Look, anything will be helpful, even inconsequential stuff. Grace manipulates people into telling her things, usually just little bits of information she can connect to other little bits of information. And lately someone's been telling her little bits of information about us.'

Peter flinched slightly at the dark edge to her tone. 'Are you sure –'

'How else do you explain it?' was the impatient reply. 'But don't worry, we'll figure out who it is,' she added, and the malice in her tone was positively anticipatory.

'If it's someone we know then they must not realise they're doing it,' James said reasonably. 'I mean, you said yourself that Grace is manipulative – you even agreed that she might have managed to get something out of Clive without him realising. So it isn't necessarily a betrayal –'

'I'm not saying it is,' Ze replied, her words all the more compelling because they were spoken quietly. 'It's entirely possible that no one actually told Grace about the bet. She's not stupid, she might have just deduced the facts based on the visible evidence – and Merlin knows you lot have provided plenty of that.' James and Sirius had the grace to look ashamed; Peter just nodded rapidly, seeming ready to agree to anything Ze said just to get this over with. 'But if someone did tell her James,' Ze continued, just as quiet and twice as serious, 'if someone did accidentally let something slip, they still know it was their mistake. They would've known the moment I came running up here to tell you Grace knew, and they haven't said a word about it. No, that isn't betrayal, but if you can't be honest with your friends then who can you –'

Peter let out a hacking cough. Ze immediately broke off and James reached over to thump Peter between the shoulder blades. 'You alright Pete?' he asked. 'Only you're turning a bit blue…'

Peter was indeed looking slightly cerulean, but he didn't appear to be choking – rather, he appeared to be in throes of what was either a massive asthma attack, or good old -fashioned hyperventilation. 'Iiiighg,' he gasped. 'Iiiigggh –'

'What was –' Sirius began, only to break off and change tactics. 'Just take a deep breath Pete, just let a bit of air in. There we are – see – just keep going or we'll have to get Digweed to do the kiss of life –'

Predictably, this didn't cheer Peter up much. Or maybe he was just unhappy to begin with – it would certainly makes sense considering the first thing he said when he got his breath back was: 'It was me. I-I told Grace. R-r-right after I shagged her.'

A/N –

so it was 6 days instead of 3 - the Euro Cup is on, and these things can't be ignored :) and hopefully chapter events will compensate for the delay...

to those of you already wondering will Remus be consumed with guilt? - of course Remus will be consumed with guilt. if there were an eighth deadly sin it would be listed as Remus J Lupin (Guilt). this just gives me an excuse to explore the ulterior motives for ulterior motives, as well as to wax poetic on behalf of Remus Lupin, Tragic Hero (since i have no Severus Snape or Draco Malfoy, i must work these themes of angst and inner-conflict out through someone...) also, who doesn't want Serena to have a bit of Remus? after all i've put her through, she deserves some fun ;)

and Peter. oh Peter. several of you predicted that final moment, so may i just say well done for reading the hints that've been dropped in the last few chapters. and of course there's still Rob, Clive, and a sleeping potion to sort out... chapter 37, anyone?

as always, thanks for reading and reviewing - it is much appreciated!


	37. I Knew a Woman, Lovely in Her Bones

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 37: I Knew a Woman, Lovely in Her Bones

Really, was all Ze's brain could come up with, never definitely would've been too soon.

She couldn't quite manage to voice the thought though: her vocal chords still seemed to be warming up with a nice steady "gghhhhh" that had her back teeth vibrating like tuning forks. Sirius and James were looking like they hadn't even got to the Thought Formation Stage yet; both were staring gape-jawed at Peter, who was quivering like the proverbial bowl full of jelly.

'I really didn't mean to,' Pete was blathering hysterically. 'It wasn't my fault, she was just there and before I knew it -'

'What the fuck, Wormtail?' And suddenly James was back with them. 'What the fuck?'

Codenames, Ze's brain grimaced. Not good.

'You shagged her? You shagged her?'

And italics - definite use of italics. Double question, too. When can we run?

But Ze's curiosity was now overriding her self-preservation instinct, because Peter was saying, 'Let me explain! It's not what you think - really!'

'How is it not what I think if I'm thinking you fucked Grace Harper?'

'Quiet voice,' Ze hear herself say soothingly as James's words echoed around the tiny alcove. 'Remember your quiet voice.'

James spared Ze a murderous glower and whirled back to Peter, who was now cowering pitifully against the wall. 'How is it not what I think if I'm thinking you -'

'You don't have to whisper, Prongs,' came Sirius's voice, the tone stopping them all still in surprise. No bitterness, no furiousness, just a morose resignation seeping out of every word. 'Just try to keep the echoes to a minimum.'

'Sorry,' James said, suddenly meek, and Ze had a feeling that if he were to give in to his Inner Serena, he would be giving Sirius a hug any second now. Not that a hug would be out of place: in addition to morose and resigned, Sirius looked positively exhausted, his face tinged grey as he slouched against the wall. 'Are you...' James began, only to trail off - because, really what did you say? "Which one do you want to disembowel first?" probably captured the essence of the situation, but it was really just a bit gauche.

At the sound of his friend's voice, Sirius's hand clenched into a fist, prompting Peter to let out a terrified whimper. The fingers relaxed again instantly, twitching slightly as they went. 'I'm not going to strangle you, Pete,' Sirius murmured quietly, raising his hand to rub tiredly at his eyes. 'I just...'

'I'm sorry,' Peter said, only just too quietly to be a wail. 'I am so sorry.'

'You should be,' James snapped, and Ze winced: the most dreaded of all rejoinders, "you should be" was so serious it was generally reserved for use by incensed mothers and other divine powers. To hear it on the lips of one Marauder to another was enough to induce Catholic levels of vicarious guilt.

'Prongs,' Sirius said quietly, and James subsided, though he still looked dangerously close to baring his teeth and other, similar, shows of masculine anger. At least it wasn't Lily, Ze thought. Then he'd be pissing on things

Sensing that this might be one of those things that was best sorted in a Boys Only setting, Ze channelled her inner wallpaper and tried to sidle toward the door before the real arguing could heat up. Unfortunately, this meant slipping by Sirius. As she neared him he reached out a hand, capturing one of hers neatly and giving it a brief but tight squeeze. Ze, unused to these sorts of things, took a moment to work out precisely what was going on. Hand - squeeze - flee - oh shit. I'm trying to escape, she groaned to herself, and he thinks I'm sneaking over for a hug! Still, in the massive queue of indignities Sirius had suffered at her hands, this was at least one he didn't have know about and, resigning herself to what was sure to be a blazing row, Ze squeezed his hand back and slouched against the wall beside him.

'Why?' James was now asking Peter, the confusion in his voice as obvious as the strain as he attempted to keep his volume low. 'No, bugger why - how?'

Still looking entirely miserable, but much less likely to wet himself, Peter uncurled slightly and said, 'I just - she just - look, she was just there, okay? And I knew it was wrong and I knew you would hate me but it was completely her fault! She came to me and -'

At this Sirius went completely rigid and Ze heard her own voice snapping out, 'What d'you mean she came to you?'

Quaking visibly, Peter darted his eyes towards Ze and Sirius and then back to James. It was glowers all around with a side helping of sinister body language, and Pete evidently decided that it would be best to just give up the ghost. 'It was Saturday night, yeah, and I was asleep in my bed,' he began, licking his lips but gaining resolve when no one immediately went for his jugular. 'So I'm dreaming that there's this - ' his eyes darted to Ze again and he blushed and said, 'Never mind. My point is, suddenly she's just there - kissing me.

Really,' he gurgled when James growled threateningly.

'Kissing you?' James repeated scathingly. 'Why would Grace just get in your bed and -'

'She wanted information, didn't she?' Ze said bitterly. 'So she went to the best place she could think of getting it.'

'Yes!' Peter cried, nodding rapidly as though Ze had stolen the words from the tip of his tongue. 'Yes, exactly! I know that now - I know that I'm completely stupid, but believe me I didn't mean to!'

'So what?' James snarled rounding on Peter once more. 'So you just wake up with Grace's tongue down your throat and think, "brushing my teeth really does get them in – brilliant"'

'No,' Peter said miserably. 'No, it wasn't like that. She thought she'd got into Sirius's bed, and it was so dark she couldn't see and she thought she was snogging you,' he mumbled, not quite able to meet Sirius's eyes. 'She's horribly lonely, and she really misses you -'

'And bollocks,' Ze finished for him as she felt the flesh of Sirius's arm break out in goose pimples against her own. 'Don't be stupid Pete - she knew, okay? She knew she was crawling into your bed and she knew the easiest way to get you to talk was to snog you - and that's crap, but it's what happened. So spare us the excuses because they aren't going to mean any more to us than they did to you.' Peter and James were both looking mildly shocked by this outburst, but Ze felt vindicated the moment Sirius squeezed her hand again.

James shook his head slightly and said, 'I still don't see how you could do it Pete. I don't care how gorgeous Grace is, she's Sirius's ex-girlfriend and you just don't -'

'I understand,' Sirius said quietly, his voice still flat and free of any hint of anger or bitterness. They all looked at him in surprise, but he was looking only at Peter. 'Look mate, I really do - I know what it's like to have Grace right there in front of you, looking at you and talking to you and making it seem like you're the only person in the entire world who matters.' He drew a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. 'And I know what it's like to have her touching you, so I know why you didn't tell her to stop.'

Peter peered up at him, the first vestiges of hope blooming in his eyes. 'You - you're not going to kill me?' he asked breathlessly.

Sirius flashed a crooked smile that was really more of a grimace and shook his head.

James and Ze were both gaping at him. 'But - how are you - how can you not be angry?' James finally stuttered out.

'Oh I'm angry,' Sirius said immediately. 'Fucking furious, in fact. But the basic truth is that Pete got played - the same way I did, and the same way everyone who gets involved with Grace gets played. And yeah,' he continued, looking back at Pete, who was looking ready to dive behind the nearest barrier at the first hint of violence, 'part of that was your fault. But I've been where you were, and I can say that, faced with Grace crawling up you in the dark, there aren't very many things you aren't going to be willing to tell her.'

'He still shouldn't have -' James began, only to have Sirius interrupt him again.

'No, he shouldn't have - but he did. And us standing here snarling at one another about it is only going to make things worse.' Sirius ran his free hand over his face and through his hair, and this time it was Ze who found herself instigating the squeeze. 'Look, the whole point of Grace going after one of us was to get us fighting, wasn't it? If she could get information off of Pete at the same time, so much the better. But don't think for one second that her original plan wasn't to break the four of us up.' James still looked mulish, and Ze didn't need a translator to tell her that "the four of us" equalled the Marauders. 'Why do you think she didn't bother going after Rob?' Sirius was asking James quietly.

'Because we would've been pissed off, but we might not have killed him,' James admitted after a further moment's jaw-clenching.

It was Peter who broke the subsequent silence. 'Y-you mean she didn't...' he trailed off slowly.

'Fancy you for yourself?' Ze asked, irony thick in her tone. 'Sorry Pete, don't see that happening.' Her words might have been a bit crueller than necessary, but she wasn't as ready to forgive as Sirius seemed to be.

'Grace doesn't rate anyone but herself,' Sirius explained to Peter in gentler tones than Ze had used. 'She's completely conceited and up her own arse - she's just so gorgeous to look at you don't care.'

Peter, who was now looking almost as mutinous as James, shook his head. 'Oh, I care,' he muttered darkly. Now that he wasn't fearing imminent evisceration, his backbone seemed to be firming up from gelatinous pudding to Victoria sponge. 'I'm going to tell her exactly how much I care, that lying -' and then Peter said a few things about Grace Ze rather thought she could have lived without knowing. The final clause had Sirius gong red at the cheeks and releasing her hand to rub embarrassedly at his nose.

It wasn't until Peter threw back his shoulders and made to march to the door that Ze said, 'Not so hasty, if you please.' It was such a good imitation of McGonagall that all three boys jumped and looked to see if they had been caught at something nefarious. Ze almost smiled, they looked so predictable. 'Moving as the little love sonnet was,' she said to Pete, 'I'm going to have to ask you not to recite it to the fair Grace just yet.' Pete gaped at her, and for a moment Ze wondered it she hadn't gone overboard on the Olde Englishe. 'You can't tell Grace you're onto her,' she explained. 'Not yet.'

'But -'

'Look, he's been completely maligned,' James said righteously - suddenly, Ze noticed, shoring back up with the friend he had so recently been ready to maim. Boys. 'You can't expect him to just stand for - '

'I can,' she interrupted calmly. 'And I do. Because let's be honest - really, brutally honest - difficult as I know that is for you lot.' When she quirked a brow at them they all shuffled their feet appropriately, and she continued. 'Let's just imagine the scenario where Peter stalks up to Grace and tells her off for secretly seducing him, exploiting his baser instincts to learn his deepest secrets.' They were all staring at her now, looking faintly confused. 'And then let's imagine the scenario where Grace gives him that look of hers, the one that says she's sure the dog's just peed on the carpet and would one of the servants please clean it up? For just one second let's think about what it's going to sound like when she stares at him and says, "I've got standards, and even if you could get one up, Pettigrew, it would never be in front of me."'

The confusion had morphed into commiserating grimaces, and James was muttering darkly. 'Yeah, but she'd never get away with it - Pete's seen her naked -'

'So what?' Sirius snorted, turning to his friend. 'He's going to draw a picture? This isn't The Last Prince of Avalon, Prongs, she hasn't got any convenient birthmarks.'

'So we're just supposed to stand back and wait for her to - what? What's she even going to do?' James asked, looking back and forth between the other three.

'She's already done it,' Ze said patiently, still amazed at how accurately Serena had predicted it all: Grace was definitely after breaking up the Marauders - she'd just settled on seducing Peter rather than Remus. 'She aimed to get one of you four under her thumb and she has - now she's just waiting for the best time to reveal the information.'

'But she can't reveal it if Pete's already called her bluff,' Sirius pointed out, sounding utterly puzzled.

'True,' Ze admitted, still patient. 'But if Pete goes off and tells her she's an evil conniving slag and he knows it, the problem isn't solved, it's just been put off another week or two. Look, this is not a quidditch match. Grace hasn't got some great master plan you can foil by destroying one little bit of it,' she explained. 'She's just out to cause as much trouble as she can, and she uses things as they come to her. It isn't particularly clever or even really all that villainous - she just gathers information bit by bit and then uses it against people. And right now, Pete happens to be her prime source of information...which means he's the perfect weapon.'

James and Sirius were gaping at her; Peter looked entirely pink. 'What?' James finally managed. 'That makes absolutely no sense!'

'Yes it does!' Ze cried, nearing the end of her limited supply of fortitude. 'Look, she's gotten information from Pete multiple times, and it's always been correct, hasn't it?'

'Multiple times?' James was gasping at the same time Sirius sighed ruefully and murmured, 'She always was persistent.'

Ze, who wasn't really keen on hearing any more of Grace's virtues, ignored this statement to look at Peter, who was once more looking like a mouse facing the business end of an alley cat. 'She always instigated it!' he cried helplessly. 'I just tried to mind my own -'

'You told her about the bet when she got to you on Saturday,' Ze broke in ruthlessly, not in the mood for any more tear-soaked confessions. 'And I'm guessing that on Monday she batted her eyes and you told her Allister and Zeke were going to talk with their girlfriends.' Peter looked ready to sink into the floor, and could only nod miserably in admission. 'I don't know when you she asked you whether Remus fancied Serena but - '

'What?' Sirius broke in, as this was definitely a change from the life-threatening topics that had come before.

'She asked,' Peter piped up, determined to defend himself. 'I just told her that I haven't heard Remus talk about Serena in ages! And I didn't mean to tell her about your being on the grounds on Tuesday night,' he added, one desperate apology after another. 'I honestly didn't - it just slipped out when she was - '

But this particularly damning admission had Ze interrupting him with a snarling 'What?'

The moment she broke his flow, Peter realised his mistake and attempted to suck the words back in, ending in an odd sort of choking grunt as his eyes pinged back and forth between James and Sirius. James was glaring murderously at Pete once more, muttering what sounded like a laundry list of torture implements under his breath, and Sirius was pinching the bridge of his nose as though someone had recently decided to drill for oil in his sinuses. Pete licked his lips nervously. 'I'll just go and find that Manacles then -'

Ze snagged him by the collar on his way past, effectively immobilising him with the threat of yet more strangulation. Gaze fixed on the middle distance, her brain whirred through the events of Tuesday night - of dancing naked, of eating sandwiches, of being chased by an enormous black dog that had apparently been stealing panties for years... Panties from the Gryffindor girls' dormitory, from everyone except the one girl who happened to be on the quidditch team... Narrowed eyes raked over James and Sirius, both of whom were shifting nervously in their shoes. Serena and Lily had seen a second animal - bigger, scarier, more teeth - than the black dog, hadn't they? 'The two of you have got a lot of explaining to do,' she informed the boys, the edge in her voice so sharp they could have shaved with it. 'But not right now,' she added when they both opened their mouths to tell the most spectacular lie in Marauder history.

'Right now,' she continued, 'we're going to forget about Tuesday night and Manacles and years of stealing knickers, and we're going to decide what Pete's going to tell Grace during their next little tryst.'

Sirius gulped. James gaped. Peter tried to recall the definition of the word tryst. 'I don't think they should have another tyre- trys- thingy,' James was saying, having grasped onto the subject-change like it was a security blanket. 'I think that would be a very bad idea,' he added significantly, nodding his head not-so-subtly in Sirius's direction.

'Prongs, the Tone With Extra Emphasis only works if the person you're talking about isn't paying attention,' Sirius said with a sigh.

'Will I have to shag her again?' Peter asked, and Ze tried to pretend he didn't sound hopeful.

'Is that how she usually gets information out of you?' she found herself asking sharply.

Peter went pink and Sirius said, 'well, if the method works...' Ze and James gaped at him. Sirius just looked back, all wide-eyed impatience. 'What? We want him to feed her lies, don't we?'

'How can you not care?' James all but shouted, completely astounded by this utter lack of lachrymal lassitude. 'How can you not care that he's - he's fornicating with your ex-girlfriend?'

'Fornicating?' Sirius and Peter chorused in confusion. 'Why didn't you just say -'

James drew himself up. 'There is a lady present,' he said stiffly.

'Where?' Ze asked, glancing around. 'It's just us - we couldn't fit another person if we tried.'

Sirius closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. 'Never mind. My point, Prongs, is that Grace doesn't owe me any allegiance - she can fornicate with whomever she pleases. And, because she's spiteful and vindictive, whomever happens to be Pete.'

'Perfidious bitch,' Peter mumbled bitterly. 'Just proves girls are rubbish - the only people you can trust are your mates,' he added righteously, only to have Sirius turn a cool and rather distant look on him.

'I said I wouldn't kill you Pete,' was the quiet reply. 'That doesn't mean I trust you or really respect you right now.'

There was a faint hiss of indrawn breath as both James and Ze thought Ouch! But, Ze reasoned, Pete shouldn't have expected anything less: betrayal - whether sex was involved or not - wasn't something to be taken lightly. Especially not when you were betraying a group of friends so tight they had their own name and a coterie of fangirls. Some things are just sacred. It was at this point that Ze realised she probably wasn't helping by pushing the issue of Peter continuing his clandestine meetings with Grace as a double agent. 'You know,' she burbled into the decidedly frosty atmosphere, 'maybe we should take a break to, er, confer.'

There was much darting of eyes. 'But aren't we conferring right... now?'

'Well, yeah,' Ze said, stalling with a bright smile as she tried desperately to come up with something. 'But that's just us...see... Lily!' she cried, her eyes landing briefly on James. 'I've got to see Lily,' she repeated, nodding rapidly. 'And Serena and Dorcas - I've got to tell them what's going on. And then we'll have to decide what we want Pete to tell Grace -'

'Why will they care?' Sirius was asking blankly.

'Revenge, Padfoot,' James reminded him. 'With Lily you never turn your back on the Revenge.'

'Isn't that a pirate ship?' asked Peter in tremulous tones.

'Sometimes, yes,' Ze replied, impatient for the madness to end - or, at least go on break for the night. Yes, she did need to impart this latest news to the other members of S.H.I.T.E.E. (Seeking Honourable Incapacitation and Thorough Evisceration of the Enemy), but Lily was on rounds, Dorcas was in the library, and Serena was probably still in the process of deflowering Remus - all activities Ze was loathe to interrupt. What she really needed to happen was for James to take Peter off for a fist-to-head discussion about why Thou Shalt Not Shag Thine Friend's Ex-girlfriend, leaving her alone with Sirius. She was fairly certain he would bare his soul - or at least his lips - and she could kiss it better. So really, all she needed to do was suggest to James –

'Pardon me, have you seen Zenobia Meridian?' The question came from the other side of the tapestries hiding the alcove, and the tone of the voice indicated that a photo of a decidedly shifty-eyed personage might have been shoved under someone's nose in accompaniment. Ze's blood ran cold - weren't The Authorities always asking questions like "pardon me, have you seen this person"? - until her brain managed to shout through "No no - that's just Dorcas looking for you!"

'No,' the insolent voice of a second or third year replied from the other side of the tapestries, and there followed a shuffle of paper and tapping of steps that said one party had moved off.

Squashed into the tiny alcove, the four of them had frozen instantly upon hearing Ze's name, and it was clear that none of the boys had recognised Dorcas's voice the way Ze had. So it was quite understandable that, when the tapestry concealing them was jerked unexpectedly back, they let out a collective - and extremely undignified - shriek. 'We're not doing anything!' James added shrilly, and far too guiltily.

Dorcas spared him a distinctly unimpressed glance before training her eyes on Ze. 'I need to talk with you,' she said without preamble, ignoring the existence of Peter and Sirius completely.

'Uh...okay?' Ze replied hesitantly from the rear corner of the alcove, thinking, Now? Seriously, Universe, NOW?

Dorcas perused the space with a shrewd eye for volume and judiciously said, 'I don't think I'll fit.'

'Eeek,' squeaked Peter.

'We'll come out!' promised James.

'The bow would probably put us at capacity,' Sirius agreed with a commiserating nod.

'I hate my life,' said Ze, but no one seemed to notice.

James was already sidling out of the alcove, hands raised as though Dorcas needed proof that he was unarmed; Peter was scuttling after him, and Sirius was heaving a sigh as he prised himself away from the wall. Ze had no choice but to follow, glum expression and resigned sigh in place. James was edging across the common room, obviously keen on escaping, but Sirius merely tucked his hands into his pockets and spared a faint smile for Dorcas before looking down at Ze. The smile deepened slightly, then shifted until it was more an apologetic quirking of the lips.

His eyes were unhappy and, worse, tired, and Ze very nearly told Dorcas to get stuffed. But then Sirius said, 'I should probably have a chat with Pete, see if I can't get this sorted,' and Ze mentally translated this to mean "he'll try to explain, I'll punch him a few times, we'll both cry for our mummies and everything will be fine."

'Yeah, okay,' she nodded, forcing a smile. 'But after, did you still want to...talk?' she asked, hoping she didn't sound completely stupid.

His eyes lightened by a shade at the mere thought and he nodded far too rapidly to look cool. 'Course - give me about an hour?'

Ze licked her lips: Lily would be back around then, so Dorcas would have someone to talk to, and if Serena was off with Remus then they definitely weren't dosing Grace with sleeping potion so she didn't need to worry about being back for that... 'An hour,' she said, suddenly feeling breathless. 'Okay, an hour.'

Sirius was looking slightly less nervous, but then his snogging history was somewhat less amphibious than Ze's was. 'Right,' he said, eyes still glittering. 'See you later then. Night Dorcas,' he added, turning to follow James and Peter up the stairs, looking marginally less depressed than he had moments before.

'Well you certainly cheered him up,' Dorcas commented slyly.

Ze could only grin. In one hour she would be receiving her first kiss - well, her first proper kiss anyway - and she had a feeling it was going to be perfect. Well, not perfect, really. In a perfect world Sirius's ex-girlfriend wouldn't be sleeping with one of his best friends, Ze wouldn't be plotting dastardly revenge against said girlfriend, and Dorcas wouldn't have a Polaroid camera. Oh, and there would be no bluebirds. And no squirrels. In fact, Walt Disney would never have even been born.

'Let's go upstairs,' Dorcas said, patting her bag covertly and giving Ze a Very Significant Look. 'This isn't the kind of stuff you talk about in front of people.'

Ah yes, thought Ze, and now we're back in reality - I can already smell the smoke. 'Right,' she sighed. 'Heaven forbid the people overhear us. After you,' she added, and followed Dorcas up the stairs.

'I've just been in the Library,' Dorcas explained as soon as the door swung shut behind them, and Ze marvelled yet again at the mystical capital L.

'Really?' she heard herself ask. 'Imagine that.'

'Don't mock me,' was the implacable reply. 'I know where Serena keeps her waxing strips and I could have your eyebrows off in less than a minute.'

The threatened parties sought cover under her fringe as Ze herself dropped onto her bed, mildly impressed. 'Consider me warned,' she said, all mocking gone from her voice. 'What's up?'

'This,' Dorcas said, and presented her with three pictures, all taken in the low, flickering light of the library. Like all photos developed my magical means the figures within these moved, and Ze found herself squinting at the exposures, attempting to puzzle out the action. 'Sorry about the quality. I was in stealth mode,' Dorcas explained over her shoulder. 'I had to disable the flash.'

'Hhhhnnn,' was all Ze said in reply. The photos appeared to be a sequence of three, the first showing what she dimly recognised as one of the darker, more abandoned corners of the library. She had just caught a flash of pale hair and, as she watched, the unmistakable figure of Grace Harper flounced down an aisle between two towering bookshelves; moments later, a second figure - this one brunette and definitely female - followed. Another moment's peering allowed Ze to deduce that the second girl was peering furtively over her shoulder as she turned into the aisle, and Ze quickly flipped to the second photo. The angle of this one was different, and it took her a moment to work out that Dorcas must have taken in it through a gap in the books on the shelf. It was at much closer range, offering no only a decent view of the Slytherin insignia on the dark-haired girl's robes, but also the fact that Grace was passing something into the girl's hands.

'Money,' Dorcas confirmed, just as Ze caught the telltale glint of coins. 'I think five sickles.'

'And this is just a close-up?' Ze asked, glancing at the third picture, which was a tight view of two pairs of hands exchanging something with a telltale gleam. 'Hang on -' she began, just as Dorcas said, 'No, that's from just a second later -'

'That's not money,' Ze said, glancing from the photo back up to Dorcas.

'No,' Dorcas said with a shake of her head. 'I think it's a potion phial - like the ones in the infirmary. It's the right size, and you can see just there, that little hint of blue. Definitely not money.'

'So Grace is buying mysterious potions in the back corner of the library?' Ze said sceptically. 'For what? And who's she buying from? I don't recognise this girl -'

'Obviously she's in Slytherin,' Dorcas said, pointing to the house crest on the girl's robes, 'but other than that I have no idea. I couldn't get a decent shot of her face, not with all that hair - and even if I could have, it's not like I know many of them, is it? I was hoping you or Serena or Lily might know her.'

'Lily probably will,' Ze agreed, her own database of recognisable Slytherins woefully empty. 'All I can tell you is she isn't on their quidditch team. And I'm guessing she's not a prefect, not if she's selling stuff like that to people like Grace. Any idea what potion it is?' she added, knowing it was a long shot - there was barely a gleam of blue - but feeling compelled to ask anyway.

'Not really,' Dorcas shrugged. 'There are loads of blue potions, aren't there? It could be anything - sleeping draught, headache potion, mild form of Veritaserum...' she trailed off innocently, and Ze's head snapped up as the possibilities clicked into place.

'Dorcas, you're a genius,' she breathed, leaping off her bed to pace. 'That would make so much sense.'

Dorcas smiled smugly and tapped the photographs against her hand. 'I'll admit I don't know that much about the milder forms of truth serum - that's a question for Miss Slug Club Lily - but I'm fairly sure the strongest form is clear, with weaker varieties running to either silver or blue in colour, and a faint effervescence when freshly brewed. I checked for bubbles,' she added, holding up the third photo, 'I'm fairly certain I can see a few.'

'So she's buying weak truth serum off of some Slytherin - the question is, how often and how much,' Ze murmured.

'And why weak truth serum,' Dorcas added, 'why not full strength?'

'Well she wouldn't need it, would she?' Ze pointed out. 'She's already got her little minions willing to tell her anything - really she just needs a way of making sure they don't hold back any details. And true Veritaserum's dangerous, so there are probably loads of Ministry regulations governing the use of it - not to mention you need massive amounts of unicorn hair, which means its virtually impossible for the average person to brew.'

'I didn't know you paid attention in Potions,' Dorcas said, sounding faintly surprised.

Ze blinked. 'I didn't know I did either.'

*.*.*

James, Peter and Sirius had got almost to their dormitory before they realised one very important fact: they absolutely could not go in. 'Awkward,' James said, staring at the latch on the door to their room. 'Realllly awkward.'

The three boys backed slowly down the stairs in unison (it had taken them ages to perfect the skill with minimum crushing-of-toes, and they might as well use it sometime) until they reached the sixth year dormitory, at which point Sirius - the proverbial caboose of the Marauder Express - knocked and popped his head in. He couldn't quite bring himself to say "cooee!" so he just said, 'Oi, what the hell is wrong with you?' when he spotted Rob seated dead in the middle of the room, head tilted back unnaturally far to better stare at the ceiling.

'Keep it down, will you?' was Rob's reply - issued without once looking away from the stones above.

Sirius, followed by Peter and James, stepped into the room, eyes darting around in a quick search for mind-altering substances. 'You drunk?' James asked baldly, ever the soul of discretion.

'Course not,' Rob said. 'Who'd want to be drunk at a time like this?'

The three sane boys exchanged a glance. 'A time like what?'

At this, Rob did look away from the ceiling to give James the sort of patient stare that wouldn't have been out of place on a primary school teacher. 'James, what room is directly above this one?'

'Our dormitory,' James replied instantly.

Sirius, who had already cottoned on, shook his head in disgust. 'Rob, you are the most repulsive person I have ever met,' he informed the younger boy.

This merely caused Rob to beam mistily at him. 'Ah, thanks Sirius.' And then he went back to staring at the ceiling, libidinous grin in place.

'I still don't -' James began, only to be cut off by Rob.

'You ever listened to two people shag, Potter?'

'No,' James said blankly.

'Me either,' Rob replied happily. 'But there's a first time for everything, in'it?'

James was now wearing the same expression Sirius had been moments before. 'But - that - they - Moony -'

'Relax,' Sirius soothed. 'The floor's got to be at least a metre thick - he'll never hear anything.'

'And that, my friend, is why you will never find happiness in life,' Rob murmured philosophically, folding his arms across his chest.

'Why, because I've got a realistic understanding of building specifications?' Sirius said snidely.

'Because you continuously surround yourself with the negative energies of pessimism and a nihilistic worldview. Universe doesn't like that,' Rob sighed, and, when Sirius would have rebutted, held up his hand to request silence. 'Hang on - I think I hear something -'

They all froze, Sirius mid-cringe. But there was just the creak of rusty hinges and the slamming of a door one storey below. 'Thank Merlin,' Peter breathed, pressing a hand to his heart. 'Thought my ears were going to start bleeding.'

'Bleeding?' Rob gaped. 'Pete, this is quality stuff - we have a genuine chance to find out what a girl sounds like when sh-'

'Was your mum a satyr or something?' James interrupted, looking utterly repulsed.

'I think only your dad can be a satyr,' was Rob's thoughtful reply.

'What, they haven't got girl satyrs?' Peter asked.

'I think mostly they've got nymphs,' was Sirius's shrugging contribution. Ze would make a lovely nymph. Of course Ze makes a lovely Ze...

'Was your dad a satyr then -'

'You can be a sex-crazed lunatic without a bit of satirical blood in you,' Rob said with what sounded an awful lot like authority.

'Oh you're definitely not satirical,' Sirius muttered. 'That would be too much to hope for.'

'Why are you three down here, anyway?' Rob asked, suddenly looking uncomfortably crafty. 'You've got every right to be up there, you know - we could just pop up -'

'NO,' three very emphatic voices snarled.

'Fine,' Rob said petulantly, folding his arms once more. 'Poofs,' he added under his breath.

This merely instigated a mass eye roll and, sensing that there would be no sense from Rob's quarter, the three older boys resigned themselves to sinking down on empty beds and waiting for it to be over. The dormitory was conveniently empty of other sixth years, and so each Marauder should have had a bed to himself...except that Peter insisted on sitting himself directly beside Sirius. Sirius shot a pleading look to James, who suddenly became very interested in the bed curtains hanging just inches from his nose; the message was clear: your ridiculously contrived and melodramatic sex triangle, your problem.

Pete's eyes darted from Rob to James, both of whom were utterly absorbed in their own worlds, before turning to Sirius. 'Sirius,' he began earnestly, 'I really am sorry -'

'Look,' Sirius interrupted, shifting nervously, 'could we not do this now -'

'No,' Peter said hurriedly, 'no, I really want to apologise, to know that things are okay between us -'

'Pete, you lied to me,' Sirius said incredulously. 'Well, maybe not lied, but you definitely weren't honest. And what's worse, you went behind my back to do it. I could give a toss if you fancy Grace,' he said quite honestly, 'but why didn't you just tell me she'd come on to you?'

Peter's cheeks were burning red, and he couldn't meet Sirius's gaze. 'It was just got out of hand, didn't it?' he said. 'And then I'd told her about the bet, and it was just so much easier to tell you that I'd gone out because - because -'

'Because you thought being teased for wanking would be better than having us angry with you for cheating.'

'I didn't cheat!' Peter cried.

'You cheated on us,' Sirius said flatly. 'You cheated on the Marauders. That's harsh Pete, really harsh.' Sirius could have sworn he heard James say "Zing!" under his breath, but when he glanced over his friend was completely absorbed in batting at a tassel like it was a cat toy.

'I'm sorry,' Peter whispered, sounding almost tearful. 'I really am, and I know you hate me -'

'I don't hate you,' Sirius said, incredibly tired of this whole day, 'I'm just not that pleased with you right now. And you don't have to keep apologising, because I've already forgiven you or whatever - it's just going to take some time before I can really trust you again. We're still friends, Pete, we're just...not that close right now, okay?

'Yeah,' Pete said morosely. 'Okay.'

Sirius nodded, glad to have got that over with, and was just about to change the subject when a sudden bolt of deviousness struck him. 'We're trusting you, you know, to help us out with Grace,' he said with as much gravity as he could muster. 'If you think you can't do it - lie to her, I mean, not let her get the truth out of you - you've got to let us know, right?'

'Right,' Peter said, nodding rather desperately. 'Complete and total honesty, from now on. Got it.'

'Good,' Sirius nodded, and turned away to hide a faint smile.

'You know,' Rob said suddenly, only to trail off.

'You've got a crick in your neck?' James suggested into the silence.

'Well, yeah,' Rob agreed a moment later. 'But mostly I was thinking that really, we could end the bet now, couldn't we?'

This had Sirius and Peter sitting up straight, and James abandoning the tassel toy all together. 'What?'

'How do you -'

'I mean, look at it objectively,' Rob continued, sitting up and massaging his neck. 'Who's left in? The three of us, right?' he said, pointing between himself, James and Sirius. 'Last men standing, three out of seven - that's less than half, isn't it?'

'Well, yeah,' Sirius began, 'but -'

'Am I right or am I right?' Rob said, arching both brows and looking suspiciously like Schoolboy Satan. 'Four out of seven have given in to the first girl who looked their way - well, except you Pete, unless your hand's got eyes and is called Susan,' he added, and Peter turned fearful, beseeching eyes on Sirius.

Nodding to show that he wasn't about to give Pete up, Sirius turned to Rob and said, 'so what's your point?' as sceptically as he could.

'My point is, Allister finds some girl, takes her to Hogsmeade, and snogs her the second he gets a chance. And then Zeke, same thing - meets some girl, she bats her eyes, they're off in a broom cupboard quicker than you can say "desperation". And now there's Remus - sure, he's lasted awhile, but clearly the abstinence has gotten to him,' Rob said, twirling a finger beside his temple in the universal sign for "loony". 'One minute he's minding his own business in the common room, next minute he's going upstairs with Sickle-a-Shag Serena.'

'But Remus has fancied Ser-' Peter began only to end in wheezing as Sirius jammed an elbow into his ribs. Glancing over to see if this was belated retribution for his previous betrayal, Pete was met with a Significant Look - cum - Eyebrow Raise, and immediately realised his mistake. 'Right, not telling secrets, not telling secrets,' he began to mumble under his breath.

'You should be come a solicitor,' James informed Rob in a graceful diversion tactic.

Rob looked faintly confused. 'Er, why?'

'Because nothing you're saying makes any sense, but you sound totally convincing,' James replied pleasantly.

'Thanks,' Rob said, and if he'd had a waistcoat, he probably would have tucked his thumbs in the pockets. 'As I was saying,' he added, standing and moving into filibuster mode, 'the evidence clearly shows that sexual activity, in the case of adolescent males, is based entirely on the availability of willing female partners, regardless of emotional attachment and -'

'Rubbish,' Sirius snapped. 'How they went out doesn't matter -'

'What d'you mean it doesn't matter?' Rob cried. 'They're the majority of the test subjects in the study!'

Has someone given him a real textbook by mistake?' James asked Peter. 'Because that sounds dangerously technical.'

'They aren't bloody test subjects,' Sirius was shouting back, 'they're losers! They lost the bet which means they lost the chance to be viable examples -'

'You're just angry because you've been proved wrong -'

'I am not angry!' The words vibrated off the walls, and Peter adjusted himself in preparation for diving under the nearest bed. 'I am entirely calm, and rational and reasonable and -' Sirius heaved a breath and tried not to growl. 'And you are deliberately skewing the circumstances to prove your own pointless...point,' he finished off rather anti-climactically.

'I'm not skewing circumstances,' Rob said righteously, 'you're refusing to face facts! The data clearly indicates -'

'Data?' James mumbled beneath Sirius's much more vehement, 'The facts are that whoever wins the bet proves the point! It doesn't matter why the losers went out - they're out. If I win - when I win - it'll be because I'm capable of persevering and waiting on a relationship based on - on - on relationships stuff.'

'Ha!' Rob shouted, the single syllable ringing off the walls. 'Well when I win, it'll be because I was capable of holding out for a meaningless physical encounter!'

'What?' Sirius snapped. 'That doesn't make any sense! Why would you "hold out" for a meaningless physical encounter -'

'Why would you wait for a relationship based on "relationship stuff"?' Rob shot back. 'It makes more sense to hold out for something you know is going to happen than to just sit around waiting on something that's got no guarantees -'

'Yeah, but you don't know that anything's going to happen,' James said mildly, shrugging at Rob. 'I mean, your record with girls isn't exactly -'

'Well I've got Ze, haven't I?' Rob said smugly.

'You have not got Ze,' Sirius roared, but Rob didn't so much as break stride.

'All I've got to do is wait for Sir Lancelot here to fall in love,' he continued, cocking his head at Sirius, 'and figure out that writing sonnets isn't nearly as much fun as snogging, and then I'm home free. Ze might be emotionally invested, but I'm not, so it'll be entirely meaningless -'

He was cut off, at this juncture, by Sirius's attempt at manual strangulation. 'I'll kill you,' Sirius was snarling. 'I'll wring your bloody neck -'

'Wish we had some popcorn,' James said to Peter.

'Mmm,' Peter nodded. 'With cheese.'

'Think we should pull them apart?' James asked a few minutes later. 'Only they're looking a little blue...'

Once all limbs were separated and returned to their proper owners, James planted himself between the two belligerents, folded his arms and put on his best head boy face. 'This is the sort of behaviour the loses Gryffindor points -'

'Oh piss off,' Sirius said sulkily. 'The day you take points is the day he does crosswords for England,' he snapped, jerking his thumb at Rob.

'I can do the crossword -'

'Yeah, in the Prophet kiddies edition.'

'At least I'm not completely dilutedsional when it comes to sex!'

'At least can actually say the word 'delusional'!'

'Tosspot -'

'Fuckwit -'

'STOP IT!'

'Remus?' Sirius and Rob chorused in surprise, looking towards the door.

'I can be a disciplinarian too, you know,' James said, attempting to look stern and failing miserably.

'Good - give him a detention for being completely insane,' Sirius replied, pushing Rob away from him with one hand.

'Oh so it's me who deserves the detention -' Rob began hotly.

'Yeah, and it's be a hell of a lot worse than detention for you when you lose the bet,' Sirius said with malicious glee. 'Because I'm going to be the only one left by then, so I'll be the one deciding what you have to do -'

'Like hell it will! I'll be the one telling you what to do because there is no possible way I'm going to -'

'Fuck off,' was the succinct reply. 'Sirius Black always triumphs.' And with that, he stalked out the door.

*.*.*

Only forty minutes had passed. Ze had changed her socks, her top and then her socks again (why was finding two clean ones always so hard?) and then she had brushed her teeth. Twice. And still only forty minutes had passed.

Dorcas, seated in the middle of her massive harem tent, glanced up from her notes and asked, 'how much do you think Grace weighs?'

Ze, who had been nervously checking her breath, was completely stymied.

'Uuuuh...eight stone?' she guessed blindly. 'Eight stone five?'

'Hm, I suppose that'll have to do,' Dorcas said, tapping her quill against her parchment.

Ze debated the dangers and then said, 'Out of curiosity, why?'

Dorcas blinked at her. 'For the sleeping draught of course - we wouldn't want to give her too much.'

'Ah, right,' Ze nodded, feeling unaccountably relieved. 'But we're not doing that until tomorrow night?' she added. 'Only Lily isn't here and neither is Grace and I'm meant to meet Sirius...'

Another blink. 'Well, no, I suppose we're not then. After all, Grace will have to be here if we're going to poison - I mean potion her.'

And we're definitely not letting you make the tea then, Ze thought. 'So tomorrow night,' she reiterated.

'I'm free then,' Dorcas nodded, as if it was merely a question of social calendars aligning.

'Good,' Ze breathed, and decided that Sirius wouldn't care if she were a few minutes early. 'I'm just going to -'

'Where's Serena anyway?' Dorcas chose that moment to ask.

Ze froze. 'Ah...Serena is - ' having a shower - no - revising in the library - no - naked with Remus Lupin - yes - 'not here right now. Sorry,' she added desperately, 'got to go.' And then she fled.

By the time she got to the base of the stairs she realised she had no idea where she was supposed to meet Sirius, and by the time she was across the common room she decided she didn't care. All their friends knew what their "conversation" was going to be about, so she really wasn't embarrassed about sticking her head around the door in their dormitory and summoning him to an appropriately dark and secluded corner. Grinning to herself, she began to tap up the boys' staircase. There were more muffled thumps and yells than usual, and as she rounded the bend by the fifth year dormitories the door opened with a strangely enlightening conversation.

'The shouting sounds really angry though, and they aren't very rhythmic - ' a voice was saying as the panel swung open.

'Well no one said they had to be good at it -' a second voice replied. Both boys stopped dead when they saw Ze, who was staring confusedly back at them.

'You're leaving already?' the first boy asked her.

'Leaving what?' said Ze.

'Euugh,' the second boy said, and they exchanged a look followed by a chorus of, 'Gross - guy on guy!' And then the door slammed shut again.

For a moment Ze stood staring at the door, trying very hard not to think about the implications. 'Huh,' she finally said, and kept climbing.

She rounded the next bend in the stairs just in time to collide with Sirius as the door to the sixth years' dormitory slammed dramatically behind him. There was a lot of cursing, much flailing of arms as they tripped down four or five stairs, and a few moments of dangerous teetering before they managed to right themselves. They finally came to a stop in the turn of the staircase between the fifth and sixth year dormitories, Ze squished between the wall and Sirius. 'Just the person I was looking for,' she said with a smile, perfectly happy with the way the evening seemed to be going.

And then Sirius looked down at her, face positively chalky, and said, 'Oh shit.'

Okay, so traditional romance is out, thought Ze. Worse things have happened - at least he hasn't got gills. 'I know I'm a bit early, but I -'

'I've done something really, incredibly stupid.' As interruptions went, this was not encouraging.

'Okay,' Ze said slowly. 'Is it something to do with Pete? Because really, he probably deserved it –

'No, not Pete,' Sirius shook his head, eyes closed tight. And then he stepped back and began to bash his head against the wall saying, 'Stupid, stupid, stupid -'

'Sirius - what the -' Reaching out, she grabbed for his shoulder and managed to get a handful of hair. Deciding that something was better than nothing, she pulled his head back with what she had. 'What is wrong with you? Just tell - ' With a muffled grunt of pain, Sirius tumbled off his balance and slammed Ze back into the wall again. Aside from the wrenching pain in her shoulder, Ze was more or less okay with this. At least, right up until Sirius jerked back as though he'd been burned and stood all his weight on her foot.

'Sorry sorry sorry,' Sirius panted helplessly as she yelped in anguish. 'Sorry!'

'S'okay,' Ze said with a tight smile. 'Given the two of us, I might have guessed something like this would happen tonight.'

If possible, even more blood drained from Sirius's face. 'Er, yeah,' he mumbled, and began to edge further away across the step. 'About that...'

'This would probably be easier if we weren't on the stairs, wouldn't it?' Ze said, trying to project cheerfulness and landing somewhere in the region of a nervous fit. 'Maybe we should go -'

'I can't kiss you,' Sirius blurted out.

There was a dreadful moment of silence.

'What?' said Ze.

'I can't - I can't -' Sirius began helplessly.

'What d'you mean you can't kiss me -'

'I am really sorry, Ze, I really am - but it's not my fault! Well, okay, it is... But there's sort of a pre-existing condition -'

Quite suddenly Sirius found himself backed against the wall with a finger making gouging motions perilously close to his jugular. 'I don't think you understand,' Ze was saying, her voice low and slightly - Sirius felt he was well within his rights to say - crazed. 'I really just don't think you get it. This is not a game,' she ground out, eyes snapping furiously. 'I haven't got time for you to go having a crisis of conscience or whatever the hell this is supposed to be. I have a serious problem,' she emphasised the words with sharp jabs 'You might have noticed it - all these furry little creatures following me around. And why do you think that is, Sirius? Mm? Why do you think my life has suddenly turned into Snow White and the Seven bloody Squirrels?'

She granted him a half-second's pause during which Sirius managed to stutter, 'I-I-I-'

'Because of you! Because I fancy you!' she shouted, and Sirius was fairly certain his hair blew back in the gale force of it. 'Because there's all this - this - this stuff going on inside me, and the only way to make it stop is by snogging you. So you standing there saying, "Uh, sorry, can't help you",' she growled, doing a fairly decent impression of Sirius's voice, 'isn't helping any. You are the one who got me into this and you're the one who's going to get me -'

'Look, it's really complicated,' Sirius tried to break in in appropriately soothing tones.

'Complicated?' Ze screeched. 'Complicated? You think you've got complicated? I'm being chased by fucking birdies - and I am not talking about the kind used in badminton!'

Sirius blinked. 'What's badminton?'

'Aaaaagggghhhhhhhhh!'

As her shout echoed down through the stairwell the door to the fifth year dormitory swung open and two familiar faces popped out. 'Is it -'

'Nobody on nobody,' Ze snarled in their direction. 'Fuck off.' The door slammed shut immediately.

'Friends of yours?' Sirius asked, hoping for a random tangent.

'Don't even try it,' Ze snapped.

'Just give me a second,' Sirius pleaded before she could start in again. 'Please? Because I can promise you that I am not doing this to make you miserable -' Ze let out a sceptical snort. 'Believe me,' Sirius said quite seriously, grabbing her by both shoulders to indicate proper dramatic weight, 'there is nowhere I would rather be than in a broom cupboard, kissing you.'

Ze felt her heart flutter slightly at the romance of it.

'But I can't - not yet,' he continued earnestly.

Ze's eyes narrowed suspiciously as something besides the thought of bluebirds fired off a synapse. 'This has got something to do with the bet, hasn't it?'

Sirius went a bit red and shuffled his feet. 'Well, yeah -'

He was about to explain further when he realised that Ze was staring incredulously at him. 'You care more about winning that bet than you do about me?' she said, and something in her face was going slightly slack and her cheeks began to burn as she realised that she'd been really, really stupid. She'd said she fancied Sirius - he had never said - 'Oh shit,' she whispered. 'Oh shit, what if you don't want me at all - '

'No no no - I do!' Sirius cried. 'I do want you - you have no idea how much -'

Ze couldn't precisely explain the feeling of something inside her stomach deciding not to mutiny and wage war through her oesophageal tract. 'Then what it is? Are you that afraid of having to do something stupid for losing -'

'No! I would look stupid every day of my life just to be with you!'

One slender black brow shot up as Ze pursed her lips. 'There were definitely better ways of phrasing that.'

'Oh, so now you're complaining about something besides the birdies?' Sirius shot back.

For a moment they stared at one another, and then lips began to curve and chuckles worked their way up into mild, nervous laughter. 'We're ridiculous,' Ze said at last, rubbing a hand across her neck.

'At least we've got something in common,' Sirius shrugged, following a moment later with, 'So you're okay with it?'

'No, not really,' Ze said honestly. 'I mean, aside from the fact that I'll probably have gone mad in another two days, I really do want to - you know -'

'Kiss me?' Sirius finished for her, lips twitching.

'Something like that,' she blushed. 'Mostly I just don't see why you care so much - you know that bet's ridiculous. Why do you suddenly care so much about winning it?'

It was Sirius's turn to nervously rub at the back of his neck. 'It's not so much winning,' he began. 'It's - well - IwantobeatRob,' he mumbled quickly.

'What? You want to meet Bob -'

'Beat Rob,' Sirius enunciated, licking his lips nervously. 'I want to beat Rob.'

Ze stared at him, completely nonplussed. 'You want to beat Rob,' she repeated flatly. 'At not having sex. Well, I might as well join a convent then.'

Sirius jumped at this news: convents he had heard of - Professor Binns was very keen on convents. 'What? You can't join a convent -'

'Sirius, he'll have to pay for sex to ever get any, and that's not something you can just pick up in Hogsmeade. Rob, you bastard,' she muttered darkly, turning away, 'I could kill you.'

Sirius thought about this for a moment. 'You know, that's not such a bad idea - I'd probably get disqualified if I did it, but -'

'Sirius, I cannot kill Rob,' Ze sighed, shaking her head at the absurdity of it. 'Where would I put the body?'

'Well -'

'And anyway, why can't you just let James beat him?' she continued. 'We all know he's holding out for Lily, and the only thing that'll take longer than Rob finding a prostitute is Lily realising she's in love with James.'

'Because James is long overdue for leaping on Lily and -' Sirius broke off. 'Hang on, for Lily to realise she's in love with James? Lily's in love with Prongs?'

Ze waved a hand to indicate that this was old news. 'Of course she is - how else can it possibly end? Back to the real problem -'

Still reeling slightly, Sirius shook his head. 'Look, it's a question of honour, okay? More specifically, that Rob hasn't got any - if I don't complete annihilate him now, he'll be plaguing girls with his selfish machinations for years to come,' he said righteously. 'I am saving countless women from the pain and humiliation of being involved with Rob as he is now.'

'What're you going to do?' Ze snorted. 'Date him yourself? I know, I know,' she waved when Sirius made to interrupt. 'Point of honour, blah blah blah.'

'Do you think we could pay someone to seduce Rob?' Sirius asked suddenly, since death was no longer on the menu.

'You're the one with honour, and you want to go bribing people?'

'It was just a thought,' he mumbled defensively. 'He wouldn't think he had a chance of winning anyway if it wasn't for that stupid Madame X.'

Ze froze mid-snort. 'Oh my god,' she whispered. 'I am so thick...'

Sirius gaped at her. 'But I thought you weren't Madame X!' he said furiously.

'I'm not,' Ze hurried to assure him. 'But I know who is,' she added, the beginnings of a smile dawning as she looked up at him.

'Which means...' Sirius breathed.

'Which means I can drop a few hints,' Ze nodded. 'Maybe get her to up the naughty undertones.'

Sirius, having read a letter or two, felt his brows arching. 'There are naughty undertones?'

'D-she's really into subtext,' Ze hastily corrected herself. 'Anyway, the important thing is, Rob gets it. So I'll just make sure he gets more of it.'

'How long do you think it'll take?' Sirius asked desperately. 'I mean, I don't want to leave you with the birds and everything.'

'I'll survive,' Ze said, sighing heavily. 'I've got a stick. And a few days? I'll see what I can do, but we're talking seduction by letter and I don't think Rob's mastered compound sentences yet.'

'He's got a dictionary,' Sirius explained, amazed as always by Ze's ability - and seeming willingness - to adapt to the situation. 'He'll manage.'

Ze expelled a breath, nodding. 'Okay, so that's the plan then. But I am warning you,' she added, suddenly schoolmarm stern, 'if this is some sort of joke – "let's wind Ze up and see how angry we can get her" - if you're doing this just to put me off because you don't really want -'

In less than a second Ze found herself backed against the wall, Sirius's body not quite brushing hers. 'Ze,' he said, voice slightly thick, eyes hard on hers, 'I'm not putting you off.' One hand was braced beside her head now, and the other was skimming down the side of her face, barely a centimetre from her skin. 'If you know about the things I think about doing with you - to you -' the hand continued down, the edge of her throat, the curve of her collarbone, ' - you probably would go join a convent. Because I think about you,' he continued, tracing the arch of her shoulder, palm skimming air in the promise of a touch that made her flesh want to leap out to connect with his own. 'All the time. I've spent so much time imagining you,' his hand was now at her sternum, the bottom of her ribcage, his head dropped down so his words were just breath against her throat, his lips nearly skimming her skin, 'I think I even know what you taste like.' Ze's back was arching, her body wanting the weight of contact with his, but no matter how far she pulled forward the feel of his hand was just that much further back, teasing her. That absence of touch left heat in its wake, like a blanket or a second set of clothes, stretching and bending with her, as that voice continued, low and steady, against her ear. 'But that's only what I imagine, what I fantasise about,' he whispered, his hand cupping around her hip. 'And when it happens - and it is going to happen - it'll be a thousand times better than anything I could dream up.'

His body stayed not quite pressed against her for one more moment, and then he was stepping back, pupils dilated out until his eyes were entirely black. 'Just something for you to think about,' he murmured, and then he turned and pounded up the stairs.

Ze couldn't move - couldn't even breathe - to demand that he get back here and finish what he'd started. Because he'd definitely started something - something that was so much worse than a lingering look or a flirtatious grin. This was like heatstroke, her skin too tight for her insides, her pulse pounding in her fingertips and the backs of her knees. She could still feel the taunting trace of his hand down her body, the heat of his mouth against her neck as her muscles tied themselves into knots and her flesh tingled and stretched and swelled like a peach left too long in the sun - like something seconds away from exploding.

Bloody hell, she thought. And he never even touched me.

A/N: part II to follow in a matter of hours. no. seriously. xx


	38. I Knew a Woman, Lovely in Her Bones: Par

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 38: I Knew a Woman, Lovely In Her Bones: Part II

Everyone looked up as the sixth year dormitory door slammed loudly for the second time that night. A faintly puzzled James rolled a gobstone and said, 'Didn't you just make an Exit?'

Sirius collapsed against the door, panting shallowly. 'This,' he groaned, 'is going to be so much harder than I thought.'

*.*.*

When Ze's jellylegs dragged their mistress into her dormitory, Lily was sat on Dorcas's bed, perusing the photos and chatting quietly. '...definitely sneaky - oh, Ze, have you -' and then Lily got a good look at Ze and broke off with a, 'Jesus! What happened?'

'Sirius,' Ze groaned as she collapsed in a heap on her bed, doing her best to think calm and meditative things.

'He hexed you?' Dorcas gasped.

Ze managed to shake her head in negative reply. 'Refused to kiss me,' she explained, and opened her eyes to find Lily and Dorcas staring down from on high. 'Creepy,' she mumbled, and shut her eyes again.

'What do you mean, he refused to kiss you,' Lily demanded, in such close imitation of what Ze herself had said earlier that she couldn't stop a grimace.

'The bet,' she explained ruefully. 'He says he's winning it. Something about honour.'

There as a synchronised snort of derision, followed by, 'Boys.'

'So what,' Lily asked, 'he can't touch you?'

'And I can't touch him,' Ze sighed. 'Criminally unfair.'

'None of which explains why you've taken to your bed in a faint,' Lily prodded.

Ze cracked one eye open. 'Sirius is very good at not touching.'

'Oh,' Dorcas said, and after a moment: 'Wow.'

Lily's brows were drifting slowly up her forehead. 'Impressive,' she agreed. 'How's he look?'

'Dunno,' Ze replied, closing her eye. 'He ran off.'

'So when're you getting your revenge?' Dorcas asked sensibly, and this had both of Ze's eyes cracking open.

'Revenge?'

'He's turned you into a pudding,' Lily said baldly. 'You're just going to let that go?'

'Pudding is nice?' Ze said hopefully.

Lily snorted. 'That's the hormones talking - you'll be singing a different tune once you've firmed up a bit. Just remember that he's the one who's made the rules - doesn't mean you have to make it easy for him to follow them.'

Ze had a sneaking suspicion that this was Very Good Advice.

Dorcas, who felt that Plotting was an antidote to all maladies, brandished the photos. 'Lily says it's Morweena Munford with Grace.'

'It's definitely her,' Lily confirmed, going with the subject change in spite of the fact Ze seemed to be trying to enter a meditative trance. 'Sixth year, bit of an outcast, but she's definitely clever enough to brew a truth serum.'

'So you think that's what it is?' Ze asked between deep, calming breaths.

Lily glanced at Dorcas. 'I can see why you would think that's what it is,' she admitted. 'And it would certainly loosen up anyone who wasn't used to spilling all their secrets to her.'

'Speaking of which,' Ze murmured, glancing towards Serena's bed. 'I was going to wait until Serena was back as well, but it doesn't look like that's happening any time soon -'

'Where is she, anyway?' Lily asked.

'Oh, I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise,' Ze said with a dazed chuckle. 'Anyway, I've got good news. Well, not good news precisely,' she admitted, 'it's really actually horrible news, but for us - '

'What did he do to her,' Dorcas muttered to Lily.

'If we're lucky, someday we might find out,' Lily replied bemusedly, looking down at Ze, who was still babbling about news.

' - what I'm saying is, in spite of the fact that he's completely betrayed his friends, at least we know who's been telling - '

'She isn't making any sense at all,' Dorcas sighed.

'Think if we cooled her down she'd feel better?' Lily asked.

Dorcas adjusted her glasses contemplatively. 'The notion of the cold bath doesn't seem to be an old wives' tale - not that I've done any research into the matter, of course -'

'It'll have to do,' Lily sighed, and grabbed Ze under her arms to hoist her up.

'Oi - I'm trying to tell you something important!' Ze said indignantly.

'Yes yes,' Lily soothed. 'Cold shower first, tales of dastardly betrayal later.'

*.*.*

Serena didn't come back to the dormitory that night. She missed a great deal - most notably Ze explaining all about Peter and his role as the source of Grace's information. While everyone agreed that he had been horribly duplicitous, they also agreed that the opportunities for misinformation were brilliant, and there was much rejoicing. Ze refused to explain Serena's absence, and when Grace arrived just before midnight they were left with nothing to talk about and decided to go to bed since they had nothing better to do. Ze slept very peacefully, right up until she started dreaming.

When she woke the next morning the sheets and duvet were in a tangle at the bottom of the bed, her hair felt electrified and she was cuddling her pillow in a suspiciously familiar manner. 'Sirius, you bastard,' she muttered.

She threw open her bed curtains to stumble to the bathroom and was confronted with Serena, humming dreamily as she stared into her wardrobe. Ze tilted her head and took in the tangled hair, the rumpled clothes and the fact that Serena seemed to have only one shoe. 'At least somebody had a good time,' she mumbled.

'You have no idea,' Serena replied languorously as she reached for her hairbrush. 'No idea...'

Noticing that Lily and Dorcas seemed to be stirring, Ze replied with a noncommittal grunt and launched herself toward the toilet, towel in hand. Not that she wasn't happy for Serena - if anyone deserved a nice night and Remus Lupin, it was Serena - she just wasn't in any condition to hear the dirty details. It really wasn't fair - Remus was supposed to be the fine, upstanding gentleman of the Marauders: why couldn't he be the one to defeat Rob with his virtuous perseverance and rigid self-control? Why had Sirius been the one stuck with being all noble and self-sacrificing? Oh, wait, that was because Sirius had volunteered for it, the twat. And then he went making promises about how great it would be once all this was over. Well, that wasn't soon enough for Ze - not nearly soon enough. And if Sirius thought she was just going to sit around and wait, he could think again...

This little rant got her through the shower and the scouring of her teeth. By the time she re-emerged into the dormitory (just in time to hear Lily say how long?!) she had worked herself completely into a strop. So when she threw open her wardrobe and started snatching furiously at the various parts of her school uniform, she very nearly missed the significance of the moment when she knocked her shoes against the black Circe's bag that was stuffed in the back corner. She had turned all the way back to her bed before she remembered the enormous pile of tarty underpants wrapped up inside. Once she had remembered them though, all she could think of was red lace and black silk and the fact that Sirius seemed to lick his lips every time he so much as thought about them...And then she remembered Lily saying there's no reason you have to make it easy for him.

'Serena,' she heard herself say, 'could I borrow that camera?'

*.*.*

Sirius was late. Peter and James were late as well, because they'd all been waiting together for Remus to emerge from his bed, but that wasn't much comfort when you were competing for the last slice of toast on the breakfast table. Sirius was in the lead as they burst through the doors of the Hall, but he knew he'd lost it the minute Ze stood from the Gryffindor table directly in front of him. James and Pete blew by behind him, snatching at the remaining scrap of bread like the mangiest sort of pigeons, and Sirius realised he didn't even care.

He'd nearly mown her down, sliding to a stop barely a breath away, and expected either a laugh or an exasperated comment about boys and food in response. Instead, she just peeked around his shoulder and said, 'What, no Remus?'

Completely thrown, all Sirius could manage was, 'He never got out of bed.'

'Mmm,' was the cool response. 'At least Serena got him into it.' Sirius gaped. Before he could reply though, Ze had reached out and straightened the fold of his robes, saying, 'Enjoy your breakfast,' as she sauntered past towards the doors.

All he could do was stare after her, thinking about how she'd looked the night before when he'd run away from her - and deciding he'd liked that look much, much better. He was just wondering what he'd done wrong - he knew this feeling, this was girl playing boy - when James clapped him on the shoulder, a small smear of butter marring his poorly-shaven chin. 'No time to eat,' he said as he chewed. 'We're about to be late for McGonagall.'

Resigning himself to confusion and hunger pains, Sirius followed James out of the Hall and up the stairs, Peter trailing dejectedly in the rear, nursing a recently-bitten thumb. As they turned into the transfiguration corridor Sirius heaved a sigh and thrust his hands into the pockets of his robes, only to find something crinkling against his fingers in the left. Wondering if he was finally about to find his missing charms essay, he pulled the scrap of paper out and nearly had a heart attack.

This wasn't charms homework - charms (at least, the kind they taught at school) had never looked this good. Rather than an essay, he found himself holding a photograph, the picture centred in a rectangle of white trim, the corner of which was signed with the words just something for you to think about XX in a cheeky scrawl. The picture above the words was actually rather simple, just a familiar red duvet - the same duvet on every bed in Gryffindor tower - with a girl's school uniform laid out across it. All the pieces were there: white shirt, scarlet and gold tie, black skirt, grey jumper, all neatly laid out and obviously ready to be put on for the day. You could just imagine the sensible shoes resting on the floor at the foot of the bed. And there, resting right on top of the skirt, bright and sharp and deliberately alluring, were a pair of sheer red lace knickers. Sirius could have sworn he heard them laughing at him - because he recognised those knickers, knew precisely where they had come from, remembered buying them. As he watched, hands reached into the picture and removed the pants. A moment passed - just long enough, say, for someone to put her underwear on - and then the hands were back, reaching for the shirt, the skirt, the tie, the jumper. Sirius knew those hands, long-fingered and short-nailed, had watched them take notes in class and wrap around a quaffle - and, just minutes before, they'd straightened his robes. And now he was watching them touch Ze's clothes, imagining them putting on the bright red knickers he knew she was wearing under her skirt, imagining...

'Evil, evil girl.' With a tortured groan, Sirius stepped forward to sweat his way through the day.

*.*.*

Remus Lupin was consumed with guilt. The moment he had awoken to find Serena gone he had felt like a complete bastard, and thanks to steady and unswerving effort, he'd been feeling worse ever since. He had moped his way through dawn, woe-is-me'd past his friends' attempts to rouse him, berated himself into the shower and now, long after morning lessons had finished, was self-flagellating his way to lunch. It was no more than he deserved. He was, after all, a user: a manipulator of female affections, a cold and cruel spoiler of innocence, a –

'Oi, this is the Ravenclaw table.'

'Oh - so sorry - must have - sorry -' mumbling stock apologies, Remus stumbled his way in the opposite direction, eventually colliding with the Gryffindor table and collapsing onto the bench. Vile, vile seducer... No sooner had he thought the words than he looked up to see Serena seated across the table and a few seats down. She was reading a book and smiling happily and generally doing a brilliant job of hiding how horribly she'd been treated, and suddenly Remus knew that he couldn't sit across from her and pretend that nothing had happened. Ignoring his roaring stomach, he grabbed his bag back up and leapt out of his seat, ducking his head as he did his best to scuttle down the aisle past her.

He had gotten roughly five steps when her voice stopped him. 'Oh hey Remus,' she said, and he froze with his back still to her, knowing that if he turned he would find her smiling that cheerful, pretty smile like nothing was wrong at all.

'Ah, hi Serena,' he said stiffly, turning his head to see her - exactly as he had expected - smiling pleasantly up at him over her book. Once she'd made eye contact her gaze dropped back down to the page in front of her and Remus's eyes snapped closed in relief. He was just turning back to scuttle once more for the door when he heard a tiny gurgle of malicious laughter. His eyes popped open again in time to see a third year glance at Serena, snigger evilly, and then whisper something to the girl beside her behind the cover of her hand.

It didn't take much imagination to think of what was being said; the entire common room had watched him follow Serena up the stairs last night, and Remus would be surprised if there was anyone at Hogwarts - well, except maybe Hagrid - who didn't know about it yet. Just one more black mark against his soul, one more way in which he had besmirched her honour... Of course, there was a way to save the situation - and the damsel in distress. Steeling himself, knowing he was about to do the second stupidest thing he'd ever done, Remus turned back to Serena and cleared his throat. 'Er, Serena?' he said delicately, when she still hadn't looked up ten seconds later.

'Mm? Oh - sorry,' she said, lowering her novel (was that a man or a woman with the long billowing hair and bulging...things on its chest?) to grimace apologetically at Remus. 'I tend to get caught up. How's it going?' she added, so casually Remus began to wonder why she hadn't quit school for a stage career.

'Oh,' he said, striving to match her tone, 'yeah, fine, fine - you?'

Was that amusement dancing a polka in her eyes? 'Fine,' she said politely.

'Right, well, um, I was thinking,' Remus stumbled out, very aware that the gossipy third year and her friend were watching avidly. 'I do that - thinking I mean - and, um, we play Ravenclaw tomorrow. At quidditch,' he clarified, just in case she was deaf, dumb and blind when it came to house rivalry.

'Yeah, big match,' Serena nodded, the laughter in her gaze now swinging its partner round and round.

'Very big match,' Remus agreed, despite the fact that the Ravenclaw players were sometimes so disinterested in the game that they brought reading material along for those boring moments between the other team's successful scoring of goals. 'So...if you were planning to go...wouldyouliketogowithme?'

'Er, bless you?' Serena guessed, not sure if this was an offer for a date or communication of a head cold.

'I mean, only if you planning to go already,' Remus gabbled. 'And if you are, we could just sit together - or if you want we can walk down together or - ' he was blessedly silenced by the tolling of the bell and Serena's graceful (and far more experienced) overtaking of the situation.

'Why don't we discuss it on the way to Runes?' she suggested as she stood from the table, neatly patting her lips with her napkin and flashing him an entirely guileless smile.

And that was how Remus Lupin found himself carrying a girl's books, wondering just when he'd had the time to so cleverly engineer the destruction of his sanity.

*.*.*

Ze and Lily spent an equally productive, if far less romantic, lunch hour. Stopping by the kitchens first for sustenance and essential house elf gossip, they had then proceeded to the library with a very definite mission in mind. But when they'd finally located Morweena Munford behind a heap of dusty potions manuals, they hadn't quite found the answers they were hoping for.

In response to Lily's perfectly prefectly business slow today, Morweena? the surly Slytherin hadn't even bothered to glance over the top of Distilling Delusions: the Art of Cosmetic Poitionry, as she said, 'I'm sorry, do I know you?'

Not the best way to start a discussion with the head girl.

'Allow me to introduce myself,' Lily had said silkily as she braced her hands against the table and tilted forward until Morweena had no choice but to lower her book or be charged with Grievous Assault by Papercut. 'I'm the person who knows you're selling unregulated and possibly illegal potions to your fellow students,' the redhead continued in that dangerously pleasant voice. 'I'm also the person who can see that you spend the rest of school dissecting toads and scrubbing bedpans for it. But you can call me Lily if that's a bit of a mouthful.'

Morweena had taken it well; her eyes had only darted to the door once, and there was no pleading. She'd simply closed the book in front of her, propped her elbows on the table, and said, 'Okay, what do you want?'

'We want to know what this is,' Ze had replied, dropping the photograph of Morweena and Grace onto the table and tapping the winking blue gleam just visible between their hands in the picture. 'And how often you sell it to Grace Harper.'

'Grace Harper,' Morweena had sneered, looking away and shaking her head bitterly. 'Gryffindor bitch - should have known I couldn't trust her.'

'Grace didn't tell us - she has no idea we've found out,' Lily said calmly. 'And we're not going to tell her, or anyone else about this conversation... if you help us. We just want to know what kind of truth serum she's buying.'

And that was when things got interesting. 'Truth serum,' Morweena gaped, head whipping back around in genuine shock. 'What the - do you think I want to be expelled? I'm not selling truth serum to anyone, much less Grace Harper!'

'Well then what's she buying?' Ze snapped, unsettled because she had the feeling Morweena wasn't faking her surprise.

'Hair potion,' was the immediate - vociferous - reply.

'Hair potion?' Lily repeated, suddenly sounding much less sure of herself. 'You sell Grace Harper hair potion?'

'Of course,' Morweena retorted, the nervousness in her tone just saving it from being completely rude. 'I'm not completely stupid - what did you think I was doing, brewing up Veritaserum and Polyjuice in an abandoned toilet and selling it to first years?'

Ze shook her head in confusion, looking back down at the photo. 'But - but why would anyone sneak off into a back corner of the library to buy hair potion in secret? It's just...hair potion,' she said, completely unable to understand how something so innocuous in reality could look so suspicious on film. And thinking that maybe they had just become incredibly paranoid where Grace was concerned.

'Well she doesn't want anyone to know she's buying it, does she?' Morweena said with a roll of her eyes. 'She's one of those girls who has to look perfect all the time, but wants every one to think that's just naturally how she is. No one looks perfect naturally - Grace Harper's hair is about as straight and smooth as mine is,' she added, pointing to her own mass of riotous curls.

Lily's brow furrowed as the redhead tried to remember a time when Grace's hair hadn't been perfectly straight and silky smooth. 'How long have you been selling it to her?'

'Three years,' Morweena admitted, folding her arms sulkily. 'It's the same stuff you can get from a salon, only I charge five sickles for it instead of fifteen. She buys it every month. She's not the only one either - there are ten or so girls who get it from me.'

'And it's just hair stuff,' Ze reiterated one last time.

'Yes!' Morweena snapped. 'I do spot cream and skin tonics as well, but all Grace ever buys is the hair product. Here,' she sighed when Lily and Ze exchanged a look, 'if you don't believe me, have some.' Rummaging in the large leather satchel by her chair, she came up with a small bottle of blue liquid. 'Go on, take it,' she urged when neither of them moved. 'It's not poison, and it won't make your hair fall out. It's just a basic appearance altering compound, you rinse with it once a month and it changes how your hair looks and feels.'

With a resigned grimace for Lily, Ze accepted the bottle and gave Morweena an apologetic shrug. 'Thanks for the help - sorry if we startled you.'

Morweena looked ready to say something rude, but glanced at Lily and shrugged in turn. 'No worries. Now if you don't mind, some of us have got work to do.'

Lily and Ze left her poring over yet another book, heading for the doors of the library as Ze tucked the dose of hair potion into her bag. 'I thought for sure it was going to be truth serum,' she muttered. 'Instead we stumble into the Little Shop of Beauty Horrors.'

'I'm not sure whether I'm glad Grace doesn't have any truth drugs at her disposal, or disappointed that she can get so much information out of people on her own,' Lily mused.

'Well her preferred form of persuasion isn't precisely ethical,' Ze pointed out. 'Look at what she did to Pete.'

'Speaking of sex,' Lily rejoined, 'what've you done to Sirius - he looks ready to explode.'

'Oh, I just gave him something to think about,' Ze said with a smug smile. 'But, ah, speaking of Sirius,' she continued a moment later as they turned out of the library, 'I was wondering if there would be a way to, you know, speed up the process of him winning the bet.'

'You're going to let him?' Lily asked incredulously. 'Win, I mean?'

'Well, yeah,' Ze said, as if this should be obvious. 'It means a lot to him.'

'And being properly snogged doesn't mean a lot you?' Lily shot back.

Ze sighed. 'I see your point, and it does - but in a way, knowing that he wants to snog me means more than whether he's actually done it or not.'

Lily opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it again. 'Well, we'll see how long it keeps you warm at night. But if you're happy,' she shrugged slightly, 'it's your business.'

'Yes, it is,' Ze agreed.

'So about Sirius winning this bet?' Lily prompted a moment later.

'Well,' Ze said slowly, 'Sirius seems pretty sure that James isn't going to last much longer, and the person he really wants to defeat is Rob...and the person closest to defeating Rob is...'

'Dorcas,' Lily finished, slowing her steps as she turned an appraising eye on Ze. 'Sneaky,' she nodded, 'but I'm not following. You can't expect Dorcas to seduce Rob.'

'Well not seduce, precisely...' Ze hedged.

Lily stopped them both by putting a hand out and saying, 'Ze, you do remember that Dorcas wanted to slowly poison Rob, don't you?'

'Yes, but thankfully Serena reads romance,' was the reply, issued with a wave of a hand. 'Look, Dorcas told me she used to fancy Rob. I'm not saying she's madly in love with him now, but there's got to be something there. I mean, if you really hate someone, you don't get revenge by teaching him a lesson that will make him a better person, do you?

Lily began walking again, steps slow as she frowned thoughtfully. 'Now that,' the redhead said, 'is something to think about.'

*.*.*

It was nine o'clock, and all was well disastrous. The girls' seventh was a hive of activity: Grace had been spotted leaving her band of frenemies and was heading towards Gryffindor tower. Lily, who had sprinted through every prefect shortcut and hidden staircase to arrive ahead of her, was gulping water and attempting to get her breath back. Ze was having minor heart palpitations, and attempting to distract herself with the fact that she hadn't talked to Sirius since that morning. She knew she was seriously nervous when she couldn't even summon up any an appropriate level of sorrow. Not that she had any reason to be nervous - no, not at all. It's not like she was about to become an official criminal...

'I had them do hot chocolate,' Serena was saying as she thwacked a spoon against the sides of a silver teapot in a motion another person might have called . The house elves had just delivered it, along with a lovely selection of cups and tasty biscuits. 'We'll just tell her we've put brandy in it - she'll drink it if everyone else does.'

'Okay,' Ze nodded, her stomach tightening into a miniscule knot. They were, after all, about to drug a fellow student and callously go through her private possessions.

'You sure you want to do this?' Lily asked between pants, having noticed the faintly off-colour cast of Ze's face.

'Yeah,' Ze nodded, swallowed. 'Yeah - you?'

Lily took another large mouthful of water and nodded - but she didn't meet Ze's eyes. Please don't let us get caught, Ze thought in the direction of any benevolent powers that might be in the area. Please?

Serena distracted her by asking, 'Have you got the potion?' in an over-dramatic whisper.

Wiping sweaty palms on her jeans, Ze nodded. 'Yeah - hang on.'

The door cracked open and Dorcas's head appeared. 'Still no sign of her in the common room,' she reported. 'But Delilah Murdoch and Septimus Throckmorton are having a really nasty fight...'

'Ooooh...' Lily and Serena trotted to the door to peer over Dorcas's shoulder as Ze shook her head: now was not the time to be worried about petty romantic quarrels. Digging in her pocket for the sleeping potion, she examined the china selection and decided to go for the sickly looking blue with the pattern of snowdrops. She added four drops, and then, deciding that five would be best, dribbled a bit more into the cup, stirring to blend the hot chocolate with the potion as she went.

'Ze, you've got to see this - she has him in a headlock!' Serena called from the door

With a sigh, Ze re-stoppered the potion and shoved it back into her pocket, making for the door in time to hear Lily say, 'I'd better go tell them to take it somewhere private,' in a put-out voice.

Lily was already heading down the stairs as Ze reached the landing and leaned out of the small gothic window between Dorcas and Serena. Serena pulled back to make room, and Ze got a nice view of Delilah soundly trouncing Septimus with what appeared to be nothing more than a handbag and ingenuity. She was only distracted from the fray by a tap on the shoulder, and turned to see Serena. 'Which cup?' the brunette asked.

'Oh - uh - the blue with snowdrops,' Ze replied sotto voce before turning back to watch as Lily pulled the contestants apart by main force.

Serena hurried back into the dormitory and gave the chocolate another stir as she searched the table for the potion. When she couldn't find it there, her eyes immediately began a search of the room - Ze had said she'd get it out - ah, there it was - Darting over to Ze's nightstand, Serena grabbed up the tiny bottle of pale blue liquid and hurried back to the tray balanced on her four poster. With a flick of her thumb she removed the seal and, stirring as she poured, emptied the entire container into the blue cup with the snowdrop pattern. Tapping the spoon against the side of the cup, she disposed of the bottle in her pocket and made sure the other cups were full.

She looked up to see Dorcas and Ze stepping back into the room, Dorcas saying, 'yeah, but he really deserved it...'

'We ready?' Ze asked Serena, nodding to the tray.

'All set,' Serena confirmed. 'Save the blue cup for Grace, should knock her right out.'

'Brilliant,' Dorcas beamed.

Ze ordered herself not to vomit.

'In position, in position!' Lily hissed, bursting through the doors. 'She's just come in!'

There was a mad dash as everyone grabbed up a mug and threw themselves at their beds, doing their best to appear as though they were just casually chatting. 'So, did anyone read about that...er... new cauldron regulation they passed?' Dorcas said lamely into the silence a few moments later.

Serena rolled her eyes and settled herself back like a professional. 'Oooh,' she said loudly, 'so you want to know how it happened? Well, I was at lunch, reading, and Remus just walked up and asked me to the quidditch match tomorrow - '

A loud piercing shriek sounded from the common room below. Lily rolled her eyes and growled in annoyance. 'You would think they know detention with Filch! means no.' Raising her cooling mug of hot chocolate, she sculled her drink and settled the empty mug on the tray as she went past on her way to the door. 'I'll be right back up - get her started if you can,' she said, and slipped out the door.

'I still can't believe you and Remus,' Dorcas was saying to Serena. 'I mean, I can, but -'

A second shout, this one much less theatrical than the first, echoed up to interrupt her. Everyone froze. 'That didn't sound like Delilah,' Serena said breathlessly.

Ze's eyes flew to the tray. Wait - hadn't the blue cup been to the left of the teapot... Had Lily been in the room when Serena warned everyone not to drink out of it? 'Oh shit,' she breathed, just as Serena's tremulous voice said, 'Did anyone see which cup Lily had?'

Ze was already on her feet and across the room to peer into the cup beside Serena. The blue one was entirely empty. 'Oh fuck,' they said together.

'You mean -' Dorcas began.

'Downstairs - now -' But Ze didn't need to tell them - all three girls were already sprinting for the common room, colliding as they attempted to get through the door in a wall of bodies.

They descending the stairs at a dead run, and as they neared the bottom they heard a masculine grunt of pain and a voice say, 'Lily - look out!' followed by a large crash.

When they rounded the bottom of the stairs it was to see a tumbling pile of limbs come to a stop at their feet, a spill of red hair tangling with a horribly messy mop of black; a pair of glasses lay abandoned a little ways away. Within seconds there was movement, and a voice was saying 'Lily - Lily are you okay?

Only it was a little disconcerting, because it was Lily's voice that was saying it. And then the two figures were pushing apart and staring at one anther and looking very confused.

'James bloody Potter!' James bloody Potter's body suddenly roared, 'I am going to kill you!'

A/N:

oh, you knew this story couldn't end without someone switching bodies! the question is, who wants to see James Potter naked? (i'll give you a hint: it isn't Lily Evans... or is it?) and now that things are beginning with James and Lily, will they ever be resolved (or, more accurately, ever begin!) for Sirius and Ze?

next time on Match.: how will things fare on the Remena/Seremus First Date? and whatever shall become of Peter's torrid affair with Grace? there's a cauldron full of trouble brewing between Dorcas and Rob, but will it boil over, or just simmer away...?

...and now that i've summarised the worst telenovella in the history of the world, i'll just say that - for once! - i've kept my word: Part II within hours of Part I :) more dialogue than a BBC drama and at least as much useless farce as your average day of life. points to all who recognise the chapter title, and to those who correctly guess the basis of Remus's crush on Serena (just for you, E!). hopefully this will serve as a massive fix for all those who have been clamouring for an update (although i doubt it will satisfy all who have been demanding some Zirius action - all i can say is that our lovers are like unluckily polarised magnets...but have no fear, the end is near!)

thanks so much to all who read and those who review - as always, please let me know what you think!


	39. World Enough and Time: Part I

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 39: World Enough and Time: Part I

'What do you mean, you don't know what's wrong?' James's voice, magnified by the brilliant acoustics of the hospital wing, shouted with deafening force.

'Well she's certainly taking it better than I expected,' Remus said thoughtfully.

'Yeah - that's only the third time she's gone for Digweed's throat,' Serena agreed.

It was one of those moments that would have been hilariously funny if, well, if there hadn't been such a high probability of someone being irreparably hexed. And, given the way Lily was taking the current lack-of-diagnosis, it was looking like the matron's number might finally have come up. It was, in all fairness, a complicated situation: the fact that Lily Evans and James Potter had accidentally switched bodies wasn't precisely the easiest thing to swallow. It had taken most of Gryffindor house a full three minutes to work it out in the common room - and that was with Lily and James circling one another like Olympic wrestlers whilst shouting accusations. And even once they'd realised what had happened, the whole of Gryffindor had needed another few minutes to get around to believing it. A few minutes which, thanks to Lily's healthy temper and recently increased body mass, Ze, Serena and Dorcas had spent attempting to prevent murder. Thankfully Peter had been in the common room and had had the presence of mind to streak up the stairs to find Sirius and Remus. Once they were all together, it had seemed prudent to remove to the hospital wing - as Dorcas had said "if we can't stop them hurting one another, at least we'll be able to mop the blood up more easily." That had been fifteen minutes ago, and if they hadn't quite got used to Lily shouting death threats in James's baritone, at least they had managed to get the two afflicted parties into Madam Digweed's questionably capable hands.

'James seems a bit glassy though - he hasn't said a word since we carried him down here,' Ze was saying. Lily was off somewhere being restrained with padded manacles, but James - well, she supposed it was James, even if it looked like Lily - was content to sit passively on a hospital cot, gazing reverently at the pale, slender hands attached to the end of pale, slender arms. He seemed inordinately fascinated by the freckles.

'Yeah, well, he's always said he wanted to get inside Lily,' Peter replied blithely.

This caused a hitch in conversation, during which James's voice could be heard using Lily's vocabulary to abuse the Hogwarts healthcare system. Finally Sirius cleared his throat and said, 'I don't think this is exactly what he had in mind, Pete.'

Before the sniggers could get out of control Remus glanced at Serena and said, 'Did you see what happened? Pete said Septimus Throckmorton was flinging hexes everywhere, and that one hit her and that's why they switched.'

Serena, Ze and Dorcas all went preternaturally still. 'Maaaaaybe,' Serena hedged at last.

It was time for Sirius, Peter and Remus to share one of the Marauder trademarked Suspicious Looks; something foul was afoot, and it wasn't Pete's lucky socks. After a suitable quirking of brows, Sirius edged closer to the girls and lowered his voice to a whisper. 'Alright, what's going on?'

Dorcas stood on Ze's foot and Serena let out a squeak of warning, but Ze merely pinched the bridge of her nose and said, 'It must have been the potion,' in a resigned voice.

'Potion?' the correctly-corporeal Marauders chorused in pianissimo splendour.

Dorcas was looking furious at this betrayal of sisterly silence, and Serena was wringing her hands guiltily. Ze, deciding that honesty was, if not a better choice than prevarication, at least a less complicated one, folded her arms across her chest and explained. 'We'd put a bit of sleeping draught in a cup of cocoa and Lily drank it by accident. Probably it reacted badly with whatever stray hex she got hit with.' Shaking her head bitterly, she muttered, 'I knew I'd put too much in -'

'It's all my fault!' Serena chose that moment to wail softly. 'I didn't even warn her which cup I'd put it in -' She was now burrowing into Remus's shoulder, and the sandy-haired boy was staring helplessly at his friends, hands stuck awkwardly out to the sides.

But before he could completely ruin his chances, Ze registered what Serena had just said. 'Wait a second - what d'you mean, which cup you'd put it in?'

All eyes darted from Ze to Serena, who provided a very nice close-up of tear-stained cheeks, her skin pale against the darkness of Remus's jumper. 'T-the cup,' she said with a strategic sniffle. 'I asked you which cup I should put the potion in and you said the blue one -'

'No, you asked which cup I'd put the potion in,' Ze said hotly as a horde of vengeful somethings began buzzing in her stomach. 'You couldn't have put anything in the cup, because the potion was in my pocket.'

'No it wasn't - it was on your night table!' Serena cried indignantly, forgetting that all of this was supposed to be top secret.

'Think they need to learn the Rules,' Peter mumbled to Sirius.

'Oh, I don't think the Rules would help much now,' Sirius sighed.

Ze was shaking her head stubbornly and saying, 'No, it was in my pocket - I've still got it, see?' she snapped, digging into her jeans and waving a half-empty bottle of blue liquid under Serena's nose. 'So it can't have been on my night - oh,' she suddenly said, the colour leaching out of her face. 'Oh shit.'

'This isn't going to end well, is it?' Remus asked resignedly.

'When does it ever?' was Dorcas's complacent reply.

'So what -' Sirius began, only to be interrupted by Ze's unintelligible mumblings. 'What was that?' he asked. Surely his ears were deceiving him - it sounded like she'd said something about hell pigeons.

'Hair potion,' she repeated more coherently, her hands scraping over her cheeks. 'Bloody Slytherin!'

'Slytherin!' the Marauders hissed in conditioned response.

'Do you think we could teach them to do that at the ring of a bell?' Dorcas asked the ether.

'Morweena Mo-whatshertits,' Ze was explaining. 'The one we thought was selling Grace truth serum - only it wasn't truth serum, it was hair potion. Or she said it was.'

'But I thought you said it was a sleeping draught -'

Ze favoured Remus with a slightly crazed smile and a bitter chuckle. 'Oh, it was - I put the sleeping draught in.'

'And then I added the second potion,' Serena was saying miserably, collapsing further against Remus's shoulder. 'The hair potion'

'Hair potion?!'

And suddenly James was back with them.

'I'm sure it won't do any, er, permanent damage,' Ze hastened to assure him as his hands clamped protectively around his head...only to find that his precious crop of messy locks were no longer, well, his. 'It might not even be a hair potion,' Ze said as soothingly as possible. 'It might just be, ah -'

'Poison,' Dorcas supplied with relish.

'Whatever it was,' Ze cried when Lily-James looked ready to throttle Dorcas, 'we're going to have to tell Digweed -'

'What?'

'No - that's suicide!'

'Do you want to stay like this forever?' Ze hissed at James, whose ingrained distrust of authority had him looking very upset indeed. 'We don't know what made you switch - we don't even know what was in that second potion!'

'It was that idiot Septiums Throckmorten - he's practically a squib -'

'It was probably a combination of everything,' Remus said sensibly, giving Serena a hesitant pat on the arm before stepping away from her to draw the curtain surrounding James's bed closed, affording them a small measure of privacy. 'You know how magic can get - remember Sirius and the Wicked Wiggles/Bat-Bogey Disaster?' There was a collective wince-groan. 'Yeah, took ages to get rid of the maggots,' he nodded, 'and all because we kept thinking it was the Bat-Bogeys that were the problem.'

'But I haven't got maggots, have I?' James pointed out mulishly.

'No, you've got a uterus,' Sirius said wryly. 'And that is infinitely more dangerous.'

'I'm taking that as a compliment,' Serena sniffed.

'Yeah, or you'd be taking a beating,' Ze informed Sirius with a glare; this earned her a faint smirk.

'We have to tell the nurse,' Remus reiterated, just as the curtain was flung back.

'Tell me what?' Madam Digweed intoned with impressive theatricality.

It was another moment of frozen idiocy, full of gaping jaws and rolling eyes and unintelligent stutters, and Ze said the first thing that came into her head. 'I snore.'

Predictably, this did not ease the air of confusion. 'You...snore?' the matron repeated, sounding completely nonplussed; this was, after all, rather a let down when you'd been expecting tearful confessions of Dark rituals being acted out in the prefects' bath.

And finally Dorcas cottoned on - perhaps because Ze caused quite a bit of intercostal damage by jamming an elbow between her ribs. 'Ze - oof - snores - it's awful,' said a winded Dorcas. 'Like a fire crab.'

A fire crab? Remus mouthed; Sirius did his best to suppress a wail; he wasn't sure what sort of wail though - it was one of those moments where you either laugh or cry, and his sinuses hadn't quite made up their minds yet.

He was brought back to reality by Serena's pained yelp. Dorcas, in an effort to pass on the pain, had kicked her on the ankle, and she was now nodding furiously and saying, 'Um - yeah - it's...deafening? None of us can sleep.'

'I feel really guilty,' Ze continued, channelling her inner confessional box. 'It's worst for Lily - she always comes back late from patrols, and lately she's just been...' she waved her hands round her ears in a gesture that encompassed every mental malady from sleep deprivation to an Oedipus complex. By this point, Madam Digweed was looking slightly cross-eyed.

'We thought we'd give her a bit of a rest,' Serena said earnestly.

'She works so hard,' Dorcas added.

'You thought you'd give her a rest by turning her into Potter?' Digweed asked incredulously.

'No!' Seven voices shouting the word made for quite the echo.

'No,' Ze repeated more quietly once the reverberations had died down. 'No, we would never - look, what happened was that - well.' She paused, rummaging through details to make sure she wasn't incriminating anyone. 'We thought we'd give her a bit of sleeping draught to put her out for the night. So we arranged for - uh, for her to have a cup of cocoa before bed, with the potion in.'

'And Ze had the sleeping draught in her pocket, so she added it to the cocoa,' Serena broke in. 'Only I thought I was supposed to add it in, and when Ze, um, left the room I saw a little bottle of blue potion by her bed and thought that was the sleeping draught -'

'And you put that in as well.' The nurse spoke with her eyes closed, and one could nearly see the headache forming. 'Dare I ask if you even know what that second potion was?'

Ze refused to allow the snide tone to get up her nose. 'I was told it was a hair potion,' she said as neutrally as possible.

'You were told -'

'Another student brewed it,' Ze continued doggedly. 'I'd -er, I'd heard she made good stuff and I...wanted something to make my hair look nice?' she concluded hesitantly, well aware that this sounded utterly ridiculous as she barely had enough hair to warrant a comb.

'You purchased an un-tested hair potion from a fellow student?' It was a rhetorical question, so Ze didn't bother to answer it - or explain that she hadn't precisely "purchased" the potion in the traditional sense. Instead she just nodded. 'And I supposed you bought the sleeping draught as well then?'

'No,' Dorcas piped up instantly. 'No that -'

Serena flashed a bright smile even as she thumped Dorcas in the back of the head. 'Well, you see, about that -'

'We took it from the infirmary potions stores,' Ze sighed, knowing that this was one of those times when being a thief was better than being a liar. 'The night everyone in Gryffindor was getting patched up after the socks - you came back to check Dorcas's arm and Serena and I nicked it from the medicines cupboard when you weren't looking.'

The nurse was utterly gobsmacked. She simply stared at the three girls for a long moment, and then turned to the boys, saying, 'And I thought you lot were bad!'

Sirius didn't miss the proud, if faint, grin that flirted across Ze's face.

Digweed was now moving into scold mode - she wasn't quite as advanced as Minerva McGonagall, but she was definitely qualified. 'You just took a dose of potion out of the stores - they're only labelled by rack - how could you have known -'

Ze rummaged in her pocket, once again producing the half-empty bottle from which she had dosed Lily. 'Look, here's the rest of what I put in her cocoa,' she said with impressive calm. 'I'll get you the container that the hair potion was in -'

'And we'll find out what Throckmorton thought he was casting when he took a shot at Lil - Ja - Lily,' Remus added, bumbling a little as his brain attempted to assimilate what his eyes were telling him.

'Speaking of,' Sirius murmured.

'Where is Lily?' James asked right on cue, and everyone shook themselves, more than slightly creeped by the fact that it was Lily's body asking the question.

'She's been sedated,' the nurse said primly, fingering a purpling bruise. 'She doesn't know her own strength, poor thing.'

'Like hell she doesn't,' Peter muttered.

'Are you sure that's wise?' James was asking, mannerisms the quintessence of Concerned Boyfriend, a truly frightening sight when one considered his current physical appearance. 'What if the sedative reacts badly -'

Madam Digweed blinked. 'Mr Potter, you do recall that she was attempting to strangle you?'

'Oh, she does that all the time,' the Marauders chorused, James's soprano a discordant note amongst the deeper tones.

'Can't say I blame her,' the nurse grumbled under her breath. 'Now, Mr Potter, I believe -'

The doors to the hospital wing chose that moment to fly open, revealing none other than Minerva McGonagall. 'Thank Merlin you've got them corralled Hedgepeth!' the head of Gryffindor shrilled, cleaving through the room like a battleaxe. 'What is going on? Reports of death - dismemberment - eternal damnation -'

'I do not doubt it Minerva, I do not doubt it at all!' Madam Digweed said staunchly, all but saluting as the HMS McGonagall came to port at her side. 'I can't even begin to explain - quite the wildest tale I've ever been told!'

'I think we've stumbled into a Miss Marple mystery,' Ze mumbled to Dorcas.

'- completely unconscionable what they've done,' the nurse was continuing. 'I shan't even bother attempting to explain - better to let them do it for themselves!'

At this, Ze's stomach plummeted to her knees. Spinning tales for the matron was one thing; lying to McGonagall was an entirely different kettle of fish - in fact, it was more like a lake full of piranhas...

Sirius correctly read the fear on her face and gave her shoulder a commiserating squeeze. 'Just don't make eye contact,' he advised. 'She seems to take it as a challenge.'

*.*.*

Ze had told the truth. Or, as much of it as needed to be told, and prayed that no one had brought a stick with which to poke at the gaping holes in her tale. Shock value, it seemed, was doing what luck could not. Digweed had ranted, McGonagall had railed; Lily had been envenerated and James had requested a soothing cup of tea; there had been narrow glares all around...but no one had gone after the Veritaserum. Then the headmaster was called. It seemed the only thing to do - after all, adept as they had been at determining James and Lily's present state, no one could seem to figure out how to put the body switch in the past tense.

Dumbledore had taken one look at the two figures (James nervously mussing his curtain of fiery locks, Lily with arms folded across a noticeably flat chest and man-sized foot tapping furiously) and heaved a faint, distinctly put-upon sigh. 'Really, you would think that by now we'd have come up with a plausible solution to this.'

That had been nearly an hour ago, just before Lily and James had been sequestered with the teachers behind a large white curtain. There had been sinister glows and high-pitched whines and the various "Ouch! That was my finger"s that always accompany a healthy round of Exploratory Medicine. Madam Digweed had brought out her most sophisticated mediwitch equipment, but even the Large Globe with Lots of Pretty Coloured Lights had failed to provide an answer; the faculty were, in a word, stymied. Predictably, the patients were not taking it well.

'You cannot let him take my body into that - that - that den of iniquity!'

Well, perhaps the singular "patient" would be more appropriate; for all the noise James was making, they might as well be fitting him for a coffin. Despite not being able to see his feet, let alone his face, the group standing outside the curtain had no trouble imagining what was keeping James quiet. It had just been suggested that he have long-term, unsupervised access to Lily's body; the possibilities alone could keep him grinning loonily for hours.

'I am not suggesting that he remain in the Gryffindor dormitories indefinitely, Miss Evans,' Professor Dumbledore said soothingly, and Sirius estimated that the twinkle behind the headmaster's half-moon spectacles was probably at a 7.5 out of 10. 'Until this situation can be properly resolved, it is my recommendation that both you and Miss E - my apologies, you do look so like, don't you? As I was saying, I propose that yourself and Mr Potter remain in hospital under the supervision of Madam Digweed.'

This seemed to bring James out of his stupor; Sirius could just imagine him blinking stupidly as his brain caught up to his mouth. 'But sir, why -'

'Unorthodox as the current circumstances are, Potter,' McGonagall cut him off sharply, 'they do not warrant the complete and total breakdown of proper moral behaviour!'

There was a faint "Here here!" that might have been the work of Hedgepeth Digweed, Guardian of Virtue.

'When did she suddenly start caring about students' well-being?' Peter muttered. 'Usually she's all for letting us self-destruct!'

'Ssssh,' hissed Remus. 'If they remember we're here, they'll boot us out.'

'Lily,' James was saying in a much softer voice than anyone was used to hearing out of Lily's mouth, 'I hope you know that I would never disrespect you in any way -'

'Potter, you routinely attempt to steal my underpants,' Lily snapped.

'It truly is remarkable, how quickly her mannerisms have adapted to his physical form, isn't it?' Dumbledore said cheerfully. Ze had no trouble imagining the stare this would earn him from Lily. And then she found herself attempting to apply the degree of heat to James's usually mischievous expression...

'Stop before you get a headache,' Sirius advised, his voice barely a whisper against her ear, his mouth intentionally brushing against her as he spoke.

'You aren't supposed to be touching me,' Ze murmured back primly.

She could practically hear the smirk in Sirius's voice as he replied, 'And you aren't supposed to be wearing my knickers - hasn't stopped you yet.'

This earned him a poorly stifled snigger and a pinch to the ribs, which in turn earned Ze some very curious looks from her companions.

'Are they...flirting?' she heard Remus ask Serena in a soft, faintly awed voice.

'Theirs is a traditional courtship,' Serena managed to reply with a straight face. Remus, his guilty conscience managing to take this as a comparative statement rather than an ironical joke, went red to the very tips of his ears. When she noticed his discomfort, Serena reached out to rub the small of his back and said, 'Don't worry, I like your version of foreplay better.'

It was Sirius's turn to choke back a laugh as Remus went white as the proverbial sheet and buckled at the knees. 'Easy Moony,' he chuckled as he caught his friend by the elbow. 'Don't want her thinking it's that easy to get you on your back.'

Serena beamed at him, even as Remus let out a groan and attempted to curl into the foetal position. 'Oh, leave him alone,' Ze laughed fondly. 'Pete, get his other arm will you?'

They were just hauling Remus to his feet, rather the way they might have dealt with a toddler in the wake of a tantrum, when McGonagall's voice filtered through the curtain once more. 'Albus, are you entirely certain that it's wise to send them unaccompanied to retrieve their belongings?' She didn't need to add that Hogwarts' current head students had a long and illustrious history of nearly doing one another in. 'Perhaps it would be best to simply summon the necessary items - '

Ze, Sirius and Peter were still tangled up with Remus, and so it was up to Dorcas to stop Serena from striding forward to pop her head around the edge of the all-important privacy curtain. Dorcas, with predictable strategic genius, simply got out of the brunette's way. 'Oh, sorry to interrupt Miss,' they heard Serena saying, the epitome of wide-eyed surprise. 'We were just wondering if we should wait to walk Lily back to Gryffindor tower?'

Ze could swear she heard Dumbledore let out a merry laugh before Madam Digweed threw the curtain back, saying 'We?' She got one good look at the five figures before her - Remus dangling sullenly between Ze and Peter, Sirius's arms beneath his shoulders, with Dorcas standing to the side like a judge at an underground boxing match - and said, 'Sweet Circe in a sock drawer, what have you done to him now?'

'Nothing!' came the collective yelp, Remus fairly leaping out of their arms, desperate to prove that he was healthy and whole - tonight was not the night to be goat-tethered to a hospital bed.

'I believe they are simply concerned for the health of their friends,' Dumbledore said benignly. 'As anyone would be.'

'Have they had any luck in determining the cause of your predicament, Lily?' Dorcas asked, tapping with military precision to the edge of the bed on which Lily was sat.

'I am afraid that the issue is a rather complex one, Miss Meadows,' Madam Digweed said stiffly.

'Two potions and a hex,' Dorcas shrugged lightly, as though she routinely conquered these sorts of things before breakfast. 'I suppose it's too much to hope that Septimus will remember what he did wrong of course, but at least you have comparative stores of both potions to test against.'

McGonagall and Digweed and the Marauders blinked blankly at Dorcas; Dumbledore, Ze, Lily and Serena all hid triumphant smiles. McGonagall was the first to break out of her stupor, saying, 'Ah - of course. I shall locate Septimus Throckmorton immediately and -'

'I shall request that Horace assist you in the analysis of both potion samples, Hedgepeth,' Dumbledore said politely. 'In the meantime, I believe it would be best if Miss Evans and Mr Potter,' he gestured correctly to the appropriate bodies as he spoke, 'returned briefly to their rooms and gathered the items necessary to facilitate a stay of at least three days.'

'Of course,' Madam Digweed nodded, snapping into full matron mode. 'I shall cordon off private areas for the both of them -'

'Three days?' It was James's voice with Lily's despair and Lily's voice with James's glee that chorused the words.

'Creeeeepy,' Peter muttered.

'If we could get someone up to the common room quick enough, they could start selling tickets,' Dorcas murmured, eyes gleaming with shrewd pecuniary interest.

'Hi Rob, didn't see you there,' Ze snarked with a roll of her eyes.

'I am not going out there looking like this,' Lily said adamantly, putting an instant end to Dorcas's money-making schemes as she folded her arms across her chest and levelled a very familiar - read: stubborn - glare at the room.

'Oi -' James began indignantly, only to be cut off by Serena.

'It'll barely take half an hour,' she said coaxingly. 'Ze and Dorcas and I will walk you - both ways.' When Lily simply raised her chin yet another mutinous fraction, Serena played her trump card. 'We'll be happy to bring your things to you of course, but I thought you might like to have final say in which clothes Potter gets to wear...'

Lily was on her feet so fast the Large Globe with Pretty Coloured Lights narrowly escaped becoming a part of the Annual Replacement Budget. 'Impressive,' Sirius murmured. 'That's Level Four manipulation. Didn't know Serena had it in her.'

'You have no idea,' Remus said, and the gleam in his eye was purely appreciative.

So maybe it isn't just pheromones, Ze mused as James's hopeful request of, 'Can you maybe skip the bra bit? Only I don't think I'll be able to figure it out in time...' resulted in Lily being forcibly restrained by McGonagall and Madam Digweed muttering something about reinforcing the manacles.

'I want it in writing - in writing - that he doesn't get to see me naked,' Lily was snarling at McGonagall. 'He engineered this - I know he did! He figured out a way to switch our bodies because he's been stalking me for years!'

There was a pause as everyone considered this very real possibility. Even James was wearing a very suspicious "why didn't I think of that?" expression. And then he shook his head ruefully said, 'It's a brilliant idea - but really Lily, if I was going to gain control of your body, do you think I would have let it happen somewhere I could get caught?

'What a strangely compelling defence, Mr Potter,' Dumbledore chuckled, somehow managing to beam wryly.

Lily was now growling inarticulately. 'Time to go,' Ze muttered to Dorcas and Serena.

'Lily, dear, do calm yourself,' McGonagall was saying with all the soothing calm of a runaway freight train. 'This is simply a period of stress as you adjust to the changes in your body -'

'Adjust? Adjust! This isn't puberty! You don't bloody adjust to having testicles!' Lily shrieked.

There was a mass expression of indignant shock on the part of the boys; Dorcas frowned faintly and murmured, 'Well, she has got a point,' into the ensuing silence.

'If you cannot adjust, Miss Evans, I am sure you will most admirably endure,' Dumbledore said gravely. 'After all, is it not written that a man trapped in a toilet shall soon find something to laugh at?'

Ze could swear she heard McGonagall mutter, 'When I find out who got him that wretched I Ching -'

Serena rose to the occasion with utmost grace. 'And is it not said that to gladly suffer fools is to live among men?' she said sweetly in the direction of the headmaster. 'Speaking of which, professor, shouldn't we be getting Lily and, er, James back up to the dormitory to collect their things?'

*.*.*

'I thought we were never going to get out of there,' Remus sighed as the hospital doors swung shut behind them.

'No thanks to you lot,' Serena snorted. 'Just sitting there like you were watching a quidditch match - don't you realise that we're running out of time?'

At first Ze, like the rest, had assumed that Serena was addressing the male contingent - but when she shot a frustrated glare in the direction of her female companions, Ze was forced to re-think this position. 'Er, Dumbledore did say it could be three days before they can switch back...' Peter said slowly, confusion clear in his voice.

'Oh, I'm not talking about that,' Serena said breezily. When everyone continued to stare at her like she'd sprouted a few spare tentacles, she rolled her eyes. 'Grace?' she prompted impatiently. 'Cocoa? Dormitory?'

'I think Lily's predicament takes slight precedence -'

But Serena was in no mood to listen to medical opinions. 'We're going to have to drastically alter the plot. Grace is a creature of instinct - she's going to be suspicious,' she was saying darkly. 'If we're going to find anything, we have to look now -'

'That's why you dragged me away from the safety of supervisory authority figures?' Lily said furiously. 'You do realise that this twat -' her head snapped to indicate James, 'is in control of my body, and every minute -'

'James isn't going to violate you,' Serena interrupted. 'Well, much. And there isn't anything we can do about it right now anyway, so let's just concentrate on the important bits, yeah?'

'Go to your happy place,' Ze urged Lily, as combustion seemed imminent.

'What's the plan?' Dorcas was asking Serena, quivering with the fervour of newly decorated general.

'We need to get her out of the dormitory - preferably for a confirmed amount of time. We're going to need at least an hour if we want to do a proper reconnaissance mission and... what?' She had turned slightly to the left to find all four boys staring at her, shoulders slumped and mouths hanging open even as they walked. The fact that one of them happened to have the body of a woman didn't make the response any less quintessentially male.

'Have you got uniforms?' Remus asked muzzily. 'Please say you've got uniforms.'

'Of course we have uniforms,' Dorcas said impatiently. 'You see us in them all the time.'

'I don't think he means those,' Ze muttered in her ear.

'Ooooooh,' said Dorcas, realisation dawning. 'No, no uniforms,' she said emphatically.

'Damn,' four voices chorused lowly.

'If we could come back to the plan?' Serena scathed. 'Thank you. Now, I say we find Jemima Lewis in the common room, tell her we've just seen... well, something Grace would care about knowing, and then -'

'We don't need to tell Jemima Lewis anything,' Ze interrupted before a round of Seven Degrees of Rumour Starting could really heat up. 'We'll just have Pete take Grace off for a quick snog in a dark corner and keep her there until we're through.'

Remus and Serena both let out barking laughs. 'That's brilliant -'

'Pete and Grace -'

'Ha - can you imagine -'

'I wasn't joking,' Ze said flatly.

'Oh yeah, pull the other one -'

'She wasn't,' Sirius said, and there was a very sudden and uncomfortable silence. Lily later swore she saw a tumbleweed blow by.

'Oh.' Remus swallowed. 'Wasn't expecting that.'

Serena was gaping at Peter, who was looking alarmingly red-cheeked and ashamed. And then she whirled to Ze and cried, 'She's screwing him for information?! How did I not know this?'

'Because you were too busy screwing Remus to hear the information,' Lily riposted snidely.

Ze's brows arched in surprise at his show of venom, but Serena seemed to have been expecting it as payback for the James-violation comment. 'Touché,' she nodded. 'But...really?'

'Really,' Ze confirmed.

'Why is everyone always so surprised that she'd shag me?' Peter muttered blackly.

Oddly enough, it was Dorcas who saved the day. 'Because we expected you to have better taste,' she replied primly. 'Or at least to have the sense to avoid pillow talk.'

'Er...there haven't ever been any pillows,' Peter admitted.

There was a collective wince. 'That's bound to have chafed,' Serena murmured.

'Are you up for it Pete?' Ze asked, carefully not looking at Sirius.

'Look, what are you doing that involves getting Grace out of the room?' James asked, and Ze heard the protective note in his voice, well aware that he was looking out for Sirius even if she wasn't. Still, Sirius had said he didn't care, and she was taking him at his word.

'If we don't tell you, you won't be lying when you say you don't know,' Serena pointed out.

'Did you all decide on that as a group motto or something?' Sirius asked, his mouth a flat, unhappy line.

Reaching out, Ze twined her arm through his and squeezed his hand. It was the first time she had made this particular overture, and she was hoping Sirius would take it for what it meant. The way everyone else was gaping at her was enough to indicate that all their friends were at least getting the message. 'We're just trying to protect you,' she told him quite honestly.

'That's nice,' he breathed, staring at their joined hands, and Ze got the impression he hadn't heard a word of what she'd just said.

'So can you do it? Distract Grace?' Serena asked Pete, taking advantage of Sirius's momentary discombobulation. James, however, wasn't distracted - and he was eyeing Ze and Sirius with Lily's rather narrow and formidable Stare of Omniscience.

'Er...' Peter was mumbling. 'Well...'

'All you've got to do is invite her over and take her off to...well, wherever it is you usually go,' Lily said, James's deep voicing sounding impressively authoritative.

'Is it me, or is that incredibly hot?' Serena whispered in Ze's ear, nodding to indicate the oddly serious, intense stare on James's face. Only Ze's eyes responded, but the utterly disturbed look in them as they flicked towards Serena spoke volumes. 'Right. Sorry. Got distracted,' the brunette hastily apologised. 'Lily inside James - goal is James inside Lily. Won't forget again.'

I wonder if it's too late to take up drink, Ze wondered idly. My life would probably make so much more sense...

'If she's in the common room all you've got to do is flash whatever signal you've been using to let her know you're in the mood,' Serena was saying.

'What if she isn't in the common room though?' Peter was asking nervously.

'She's never in bed this early,' Sirius surprised them all by saying. 'And if she's in her dormitory, the girls can tell her you asked for her to come back down. She isn't going to ignore you if she thinks there's a chance you'll tell her something else.'

James was gaping at him, a fish-like expression that wasn't particularly flattering to Lily's bone structure. 'You do realise,' he asked his best mate, 'that you're using Grace for sex.'

'No,' Sirius rebutted instantly, 'Pete is using Grace for sex. And Grace is using Pete for information, and we're using Pete for revenge. None of us are good people - but that doesn't mean what we're doing isn't right.'

'I love self-serving logic,' Dorcas sighed dreamily.

'Okay,' Peter nodded, heaving a fortifying sigh. 'Okay, I can do this.'

'Of course you can,' Serena said brightly.

'You're insane,' Remus muttered.

'And you're adorable,' she replied blithely, slipping her arm through his. Serena looked perfectly at ease; Remus looked professionally awkward.

'How long do you think you can keep her occupied?' Lily asked Peter.

'Um...'

'Where are you taking her?' Sirius asked. 'Third floor closet?' Peter blushed, and nodded. Everyone stared at them, utterly flummoxed. 'What?' said Sirius. 'There's a handy window ledge in there.'

Ze couldn't stop one brow from arching, but she couldn't quite put a name to the emotion that prompted the response. Or, she didn't want to.

'When we get to Gryffindor tower, you'll go in first and tell her you left us down with James and Lily in hospital,' Serena was instructing Peter. 'We'll hide round the corner until you've brought her out.'

'We'll need about an hour,' Dorcas reminded Pete.

'Okay,' he nodded, licking his lips hastily. 'Okay, an hour.'

'Don't you think McGonagall and Digweed will come looking if we take more than twenty minutes?' James pointed out logically, and Ze realised that he was - most unusually - playing the Voice of Reason.

'They know I'm not going to kill you since I'd never get my body back,' Lily informed him with saccharine cruelty, 'so they'll be budgeting extra time for various shouting matches and at least one punch up.'

James's reaction softened Lily's face into something approaching mindless desire. 'God you're sexy when you're sensible,' he sighed.

Lily's hands tightened into fists and a low-level growl rumbled in James's chest. 'Brilliant!' Serena trilled in her best de-escalation technique. 'We're here!'

*.*.*

'Is anyone else mildly disturbed by that sight?' Serena mumbled as they watched Grace lead Peter away from the portrait hole from behind a fortuitously placed suit of armour.

Ze felt nothing but relief in watching Grace walk away from Sirius, but she had to admit that Serena had a point.

Dorcas, however, wasn't in the mood of Hitchcockian scenery. 'Come on,' she hissed. 'We've got work to do!'

'I never knew she was this...tactically subversive,' Sirius mumbled to Ze as they all followed Dorcas - imitating her stealth-mode crouch - in a dash for the portrait hole. 'It's like she's got professional experience in plotting the demise of unsuspecting targets.' Ze glanced at him from beneath her lashes and arched a speculative brow. There was a moment of blank confusion, quickly followed by realisation and then gaping shock. 'You mean she's Mada -'

'Take out an advert in the Prophet why don't you,' Ze hissed, slapping a hand over his mouth as she glanced around to see if anyone else was listening. Luckily they were last in line to go through the portrait hole, and she contrived to shove Remus through after Serena just hard enough to get them both stuck. 'You cannot tell anyone,' she continued as the sounds of disentanglement and copious groping drifted out into the corridor. 'I'm working on it,' she assured Sirius. 'But there's a lot going on right now and -'

'And we'll both be shopping for arthritis potion and prune juice in a state of noble chastity if we're waiting around for Dorcas to seduce someone,' Sirius finished bitterly.

'Well since Rob's idea of romance involves a club and cave-dwelling, maybe you should be the one trying to speed matters up,' Ze snapped, not in the mood to argue about the strength of Dorcas's feminine wiles.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'He wants to know who Madam X really is, doesn't he?' Ze asked, inspiration striking like Gran Meridian after a few g&t's. 'So drop the hint that he should set up a - a rendezvous and let nature take its course. Rob'll pounce first and ask questions later - particularly if they're meeting somewhere in the dark.' She paused for a moment to think without the influence of the faux-gin filter. 'Of course, it is possible that one of them will end up clubbed to death...'

'It's a chance I'm willing to take,' Sirius said quickly. 'When do-'

'Sorry to interrupt the verbal sex, but are you two coming or not?' Serena said, peering at them through the portrait hole. The look Sirius shot her had her backing away with arms raised, in spite of the smug smile tugging at her lips. 'Never mind - we'll be upstairs. Oh and Ze? Try to remember to get your panties back this time.'

With a saucy wink she was gone, leaving Ze to face the slow, predatory grin spreading across Sirius's face all by her lonesome. Ze managed to hold her own right up until Sirius's gaze dropped below her face and worked its way down. 'She was joking,' Ze blurted out, her mouth suddenly dry. 'About the knickers. At least, I think she was. So about Dorcas and Rob -'

Sirius smirked, his eyes still making their lazy way towards her feet. 'You do know I'm going to get you back, don't you? For that photo?' he said idly. 'It's been torturing me all day.'

'It was just a joke,' Ze mumbled, wondering why the fact that he wasn't looking her in the eye was making this more difficult.

'No it wasn't,' he replied absently, despite the fact that her words had been barely audible. His eyes were wandering back to her face now, and suddenly those pretty grey irises were pinned on hers, full of heat and mischief and something Ze was fairly sure she could go ahead and label the Pudding Factor, because she could already feel her insides melting into a sticky mess. 'It wasn't a joke any more than me pushing you up against a wall and telling you I wanted to get your clothes off was a joke,' Sirius murmured. 'So tell me - are you really wearing the red ones?'

And that was the point Ze's shoulders pressed against the wall and she realised that Sirius was, once again, a hairsbreadth away. 'Are we doing this again?' she asked in a high, faintly breathless voice. 'Only if you turn me into a pudding before you send me upstairs two nights in a row I may be disqualified from the female gender for shirking my responsibilities.'

This had Sirius pausing. 'Pudding?'

'Quivering gelatinous mass?' Ze elaborated with a nervous smile. 'Not that all puddings quiver, of course - you need a proper kitchen knife to get through my aunt's chocolate sp-'

'Not that this isn't fascinating,' Sirius murmured, taking another step forward and ignoring Ze when she let out a muffled squeak, 'but could we have a little more of the warm sticky quivering and a little less of the kitchen knives?'

Ze was panting slightly. 'Er, Sirius, I don't think I can do this,' she said, sounding a trifle strangled.

'What d'you mean?' Sirius asked, terror igniting in his stomach as he froze mid-lean-forward-into-personal-space. 'You were okay with it last night -'

'Yes, but last night you weren't standing on my foot,' she ground out with an apologetic grimace.

One look down confirmed that what Sirius had thought was a particularly rough bit of flooring was in fact the better part of Ze's toes. 'Oh - shit - sorry - so sorry -' he immediately began, jerking back and managing to step on her other foot before he got a respectable distance away, from which he offered everything from self-flagellation to a cold compress.

'No - no it's okay!' Ze finally managed to say, hobbling forward to grab him by the shoulders lest he run off into the night. 'I don't think they're...broken or - ouch. Anyway,' she hissed, doing her best to smile as she flicked her fringe away from her eyes and prayed the moment wasn't gone. 'Where, um, where were we? Something about, er, pudding?'

But Sirius was in no mood for dessert - as a metaphor or otherwise. 'I am so incompetent,' he moaned, carding his fingers through his hair.

Incompetent, no. Idiotic? Maybe... Ze thought to herself. But, since telling him off for not snogging her would be both going back on her word and proving Lily right, she forced a chuckle. 'No, you were just so overwhelmed by my wanton sexuality you couldn't help yourself,' she joked, releasing her grip on his shoulders so that she could rub small circles.

This had Sirius peering at her from between the fingers now rubbing at his eyes. 'Have you been talking to Remus?'

'Er...no,' Ze replied, visibly confused. 'Serena. Why?'

'Never mind,' Sirius hastily diverted. 'Speaking of them though - maybe we should be, you know, going to find them? James and Lily, I mean, not Serena and Remus...'

Ze's confidence - she had been secretly hoping wanton sexuality had been involved somehow - took a nosedive straight towards insecurity and a possible inferiority complex. But she quickly reminded herself that she was neither Claudia nor Grace, and pasted on a smile. 'Yeah, 'course. I'm supposed to be aiding and abetting malicious personal destruction,' she said brightly. 'Not that packing Lily will take long - but after that there's Grace.'

Sirius nodded, horribly awkward, wondering if it would be within the bounds of the bet to chain her to his bed so that he could at least sleep next to her. But instead of taking a lesson out of Rob's Guide to Romance and hauling her over his shoulder, he just smiled nervously. 'I've gone off the personal destruction of others, but James'll probably want to talk. In fact I'm really late,' he hastened to add when Ze glanced up at him with a hopeful expression. 'So, you know...'

There was another moment of foot-shuffling and apologetic grimacing, and then Sirius gestured Ze through the portrait hole. Dissatisfied and miserable and for once unwilling to talk about it, they clambered through as the portrait swung shut behind them.

'Do you see what I mean?' the Fat Lady said archly as she passed her friend Violet a glass of sherry. 'Just need a long, hard shag - the both of them.'

*.*.*

When Sirius reached his dormitory it was to find James staring mistily into the mirror as Remus frantically rifled through his trunk and shouted, 'Pants, Prongs! Pants! Where are the clean ones?'

'Lovely Lily,' James sighed in response. 'Loooovely Liiiiily.'

'Ha!' Remus shouted triumphantly, only to get a whiff and tumble backwards, groaning.

'Aaagh - are you trying to kill us?' He shot to his feet, waving a pair of striped shorts as he whirled to face James. Catching sight of Sirius instead, he dropped the malodorous underpants and nearly wept with relief. 'Thank Merlin - I can't get any sense out of him - he just keeps staring at that bloody mirror - '

'Obscuro,' Sirius muttered darkly, flicking his wand at the mirror, which obligingly went black and lost all reflective properties.

'Oi!' James shouted furiously. 'I was using that!'

'Yeah, well, tell Remus where your clean underwear is and you can have it back,' Sirius sighed.

'In my trunk,' James replied, waving negligently in the direction of his bed without ever turning away from the mirror.

'Bollocks,' Remus snarled. 'Everything in there is filthy - there isn't a clean pair in sight.'

''Course there is,' James replied tetchily. 'I've barely worn the blue ones once.'

As Remus exercised his formidable powers of Vocabulary and Modification by Adjective, Sirius flopped onto his bed and stared morosely up at the canopy. I'm a complete failure. An idiot. A total knob –

The end of his mattress dipped under additional weight, and Sirius glanced up. 'Do you want to talk about it?' Lily Evans' body asked.

'Aaagggh!' It was a near thing, but Sirius managed not to fall out of his bed. Once he'd stopped the terrified shrieking and untangled himself from the pillows, he stared at the figure perched at the foot of his four-poster and did his best not to hyperventilate. 'Never,' he panted, 'do that - - - again.'

'What?' James asked, putting his head on one side.

'Padfoot, are you having an out of body experience?' Remus asked dazedly from the other side of his bed. 'Because I know I am.'

Sirius nodded mutely. It was eerie, really, how good James was. He was perched with perfect posture, one knee crossed daintily over the other, hands folded and earnest, concerned expression in place. 'If I didn't know Lily Evans would willingly tear my heart out as soon as look at me, I'd think she was trying to have a chat,' he mumbled, shaking his head until his pupils vibrated. 'No wonder Ze put off being a girl so long.'

'We talk all the time,' James said indignantly.

'Mind specifying the parties implicated in that "we"?' Remus asked.

'This is no time for semantics,' was the tart reply. 'Sirius is in the throes of emotional distress - he needs our help.'

'Oh shit, the oestrogen's poisoned his brain,' Sirius whispered as realisation dawned, the tenants of best-mate-hood spurring him into action. Leaping forward, he grabbed James by Lily's shoulders and peered into his eyes, searching for any sign of testicular fortitude. 'Prongs!' he shouted. 'Prongs, if you can hear me, it's going to be all right! Hold on mate - hold on to your ba-'

'Will you get off me?' James snapped, shoving Sirius off and tossing his hair.

'We've lost him,' Remus sighed mournfully as the red tresses drifted back over the shoulder.

'You have not lost me!' James practically shouted. 'And I am giving up valuable, unsupervised Staring At Lily time to listen to the two of you wank poetic, so tell me what's wrong so we can fix it so I can go back to perving on my new body!'

'Okay, so maybe some of him's still in there,' Remus mumbled.

James spared him a glare before turning the expression onto Sirius. 'What,' he enunciated carefully, 'is the problem?'

'I've irreparably fucked up my relationship with Ze,' Sirius' mouth blurted out before his brain could even find the appropriate filter.

'Of course you have,' Remus snorted.

'You did that ages ago,' James agreed, tossing his hair again.

'First, let's not make that a habit,' Sirius said, pointing at the curtain of hair, 'and second - days ago?'

'Did you or did you not indicate that your interest in her was of the generic physical variety rather than the specific emotional sort?' James asked.

'But I got that sorted -' Sirius began, only to be interrupted by Remus.

'And did you or did you not indicate that you were interested in starting something with her, only to renege on said indication for the sake of adhering to a bet,' the young werewolf said with all the pomposity of a top barrister.

'It wasn't like that!' Sirius cried. 'I didn't -'

'Look Padfoot,' James sighed, 'the point isn't what it was like for you, but how it looked to Ze. Does she know - absolutely, for certain know - that you fancy her?'

'Yes,' was Sirius's emphatic answer. 'Absolutely for certain yes.'

'How?' came the simple prompt.

'Well, ah, last night I told her.' Sirius swallowed. 'And then I sort of...showed her.'

Remus and James gaped, then chorused, 'You're out of the bet?!'

'No! No - I didn't touch her, I just - I, ah, I showed her.'

'What, precisely, do you mean when you say "show her"?' Remus asked hesitantly, looking faintly repulsed. 'Because -'

'She just knows, okay?' Sirius snapped, his cheeks burning furiously. 'And she doesn't object.'

'To not being touched?' James asked shrewdly, arms still folded. 'Somehow I don't -'

'She got her revenge for that,' Sirius sputtered out, wondering if humiliation could become a chronic condition. 'Completely destroyed my day,' he added in a mumble, not noticing the distinctly worried expression that crossed James's face.

'You think?' Remus chuckled. When Sirius shot him an alarmed look, he rolled his eyes. 'Sirius, when I asked if you had a spare quill you said "red lace".'

'Oh.'

'Oh,' James repeated absently. Then, shaking off his odd mood, he mustered up an appropriately masculine expression. 'Look mate, what we're trying to get you to realise is that when you say you've fucked up your relationship with Ze, you're not wrong - but you are wrong if you're thinking that the main problem is something you've said or done directly to her. You're using this stupid bet and Rob's freak logic as an excuse to postpone properly starting up with Ze. And you're sabotaging your own chances every time you let Ze put herself out there without you reciprocating the gesture.'

'That's very insightful,' Remus said mildly. 'But Prongs?'

'Mmm?'

'Try to remember you're wearing a skirt.'

James' knees snapped shut. 'Shit - you didn't see anything did you? She'd kill me -'

'What d'you mean, I'm not reciprocating gestures?' Sirius asked blankly. 'I made the original gesture! I'm the one who -'

'You didn't touch her,' James said flatly. 'You told her you fancied her and you wanted her and blah blah blah - and then you told her you were still in the bet and you couldn't be bothered to touch her because you had more important things on. She put herself out there and you brushed her off.'

'I did not brush her off! I ex-'

'Explained?' Remus interrupted coolly. 'Told her all about how you were going to take the high road and do the honourable thing? Clarified the reason you were turning her down?'

'I didn't turn her down!' Sirius cried. 'I told her what's going on and she respects my decision!'

'No, she regrets your decision,' Remus corrected with obnoxious empathy.

'We're talking about Ze and me,' Sirius spat back without thinking, riled by the tone. 'I don't really care how Serena reacts to your decisions.'

'Pull the claws in,' James admonished. 'I'm the only girl in the room.'

Remus was blushing hotly, but responded in a surprisingly mild tone. 'It all depends on what I'm asking her to do. And that isn't the point - the point is that for some reason you're terrified of actually starting something with Ze.'

'No I'm not!' Sirius shouted, loosing patience with their unwillingness to listen. 'I'm not terrified - I'm desperate! I turn myself on thinking about her quidditch kit. I would do anything, okay? She's all I want, all I think about, all I -'

'Then why does your "showing" her how you feel not involve throwing her up against a wall and putting your hands on her?' James enquired. 'Because that's what she wants -'

'I tried that, okay? And I ended up walking all over her,' Sirius moaned miserably.

Remus and James exchanged a glance, and without realising it Remus adjusted his posture to mirror James's. 'Somehow I don't see Ze as being the utterly submissive sort -;

'That wasn't a metaphor,' came the reply in painfully cross tones. 'I mean I actually stepped on her - I think I might have broken a toe. And then the moment was completely gone and I wouldn't have tried again even if she would have let me.' He glanced up at last and slammed himself against his headboard when he jerked back in shock. 'Fuck and Merlin - I didn't realise I was giving an exclusive to Witch Weekly. If you two need to check your makeup the bathroom's just there,' he added snidely, pointing at the door across the room.

'I hope you don't get paid by the joke,' James sniped back.

'Enough with the hair!' Sirius and Remus shouted together.

'Fine! I'll quit flipping the hair if you'll promise to work out your fears about relationships,' James offered sulkily.

'I do not have relationship fears!' Sirius all but wailed.

'Yes you do,' Remus informed him in his best analyst voice.

'And they are destroying your chances with the one woman in the world who might be right for you,' James nodded.

'No, that fact that I've possibly maimed her for life is -'

'Padfoot, you're forcing her to resort to manipulative, quintessential female behaviour,' James said gravely. 'Ze is not acting like herself and you're forcing her into it. You need to consult your feelings and -'

At this juncture the door to the dormitory thankfully flew open, saving Sirius from a fate worse than death as Rob's shout echoed into the room. 'Pete, where's the box of du- Jesus son of Mary, you're here?'

'Where else would we be -'

'Get yourself turned into a girl and you go running off before we can even take proper advantage of your good fortune,' Rob grinned, clattering into the room only to stop dead when he took in the fact that Remus and James were seated on Sirius's bed.

'What are you doing? Oh - hang on - skirt,' he beamed, throwing himself towards Sirius and Remus. 'Got to get the proper vantage point. This is what I call education -'

'Stop trying to look at my knickers!' James shrieked, kicking Rob violently on the side of the head.

'We are having a very serious and important conversation Rob,' Remus intoned.

'Oh shut your gob - just because you're the Silent Shagger doesn't mean James isn't more community minded,' Rob said cheerfully as he rubbed his ear. 'So what's it like?' he asked eagerly. 'Which one's better?'

James stared at him in complete incomprehension. 'What's better?'

Rob's jaw gaped as his entire world-view crumbled in a cloud of hormone-saturated dust. 'Potter! You've been offered the chance to answer one of the universe's fundamental questions and you're telling me you haven't even bothered to do a bit of research? What about science? The quest for knowledge? Benefiting the common good!?'

'Has he gone off his meds again?' Remus asked Sirius.

'No,' Sirius groaned, 'I think he means -'

'You've got the opportunity to experience the female orgasm and you haven't even tried?' Rob shouted into James's now snow-white face.

'For fuck's sake,' Sirius groaned, his worst fears having been confirmed.

Remus looked contemplative and shrugged. 'Well, he has got a point.'

'I'm not touching Lily!' James was ranting at Rob. 'The first time I get her off I want it to be because she feels -'

'I'm sure she feels just lovely, but I'm never going to have a chance to touch her,' Rob interrupted with furious impatience. 'Get to the important stuff - what's it like to have tits?'

Salvation, thought Sirius, thou truly art a double-edged sword.

*.*.*

'Well if you won't look then how big does it feel?,' Serena was asking as Ze pushed open the door to her dormitory. 'Does he dress to the left or the right?'

'Where is that chastity belt when I need it?' James's voice was growling from the direction of Lily's wardrobe.

'Grace owns thirty-seven pairs of black shoes,' Dorcas piped up from the other side of Grace's bed.

'Serena, a little help,' Lily begged from the depths of her trunk. When she received no reply she looked up to see Serena staring down at her with an "I'm waiting so patiently" expression. 'Fine,' Lily rolled her eyes. 'To the left.'

'I knew it!' Serena crowed.

'You knew it?' Lily demanded, leaping out of her crouch to stare beadily at Serena. 'Why are you staring at Potter's crotch?!'

'Why not?' Serena asked with a shrug. 'Transfiguration isn't that interesting.'

'Well neither is Potter's - Potter's - Potter's -'

'Penis?' Ze supplied with wry amusement.

'Exactly,' Lily snapped. 'And I don't see why you-' Her head snapped back around as Ze hobbled towards her bed, all thoughts of Serena's Transfiguration transgressions forgotten in the face of possibly injury. 'Why are you limping?'

Ze gave a bitter little smile. 'Let's just say I've discovered an antidote to the Pudding Factor.'

Dorcas's head rose above Grace's bed like a be-bowed monster rising from the deep so that she could share in the look flashing between everyone who wasn't Ze. 'Is this one of those times where we ask probing questions and listen without judgement?' Serena finally asked.

'No, this is one of those times where you continue to discuss Potter's penis like there's nothing wrong,' Ze replied with a small, tight smile.

'Potter's penis,' Dorcas murmured thoughtfully. 'That's nicely alliterative.'

'I hate my life,' said Lily. No one listened.

'One more question,' Serena promised, acknowledging Ze's request by turning back Lily and continuing like nothing had changed. 'Just one, and then I will leave you alone in testosterone-soaked misery.'

'What?' It was the sort of tone that usually had Ze backing slowly away from Lily with hands raised, but Serena seemed willing to take her chances.

'And fourteen pairs of white shoes,' Dorcas called from the floor, reminding the world that the phrase "back to normal" was a dicey guess at best when it came to the seventh year Gryffindors.

'It's actually more of a visual confirmation,' Serena explained to Lily with her most winning smile. 'How are Potter's abs?'

'You cannot be serious,' Lily snarled.

'No, or I'd be snogging Ze,' Serena replied brightly. Ze paused in the act of throwing herself miserably onto her bed and rolled her eyes. 'So, about that stomach -'

Lily huffed. 'I do not care about Potter's stomach any more than I care about his -'

'I will be silent - won't speak another word,' Serena begged. 'And really, I'm doing you a favour,' she added slyly. 'I know you're dying to know, you're just too scared to actually look -'

'I am not!' Lily shouted.

'Could someone possibly help me?' came the quiver of Dorcas's voice from beneath Grace's bed. 'Only I think my bow's caught on something...'

'Get off!' Lily was shouting.

'I just want a quick look,' Serena wheedled, her hands jerking up on the hem of James's jumper even as Lily jerked valiantly down. 'Two seconds Lily, I promise -'

'I think I've just ripped something,' Dorcas informed the room at large, voice muffled and thready.

'Ahha!' Serena cried triumphantly. 'Merlin - wasn't expecting it to be this good. And - oh my gods - James Potter's got a tattoo!'

'What?!' Lily shrieked, the jumper coming nearly off as she fought to examine the rippling expanse of James's abdomen. 'No he doesn't!'

'And my work here is through,' Serena said smugly. 'Careful Dorcas - I'm coming,' she called as she circled around the end of Grace's bed, leaving Lily to stare glassily down at James's torso.

'Nothing you haven't seen before,' Ze teased after the staring had gone past the time boundaries of Acceptable Curiosity. Putting aside her own mental torture, she limped over to Lily's bed, silently admitting that, though James was no Sirius, there were worse things to strip naked. 'Guess this view's a little more personal though.'

'I can feel them...rippling,' Lily breathed in wonder.

'Can you make them move?' Ze asked curiously, more than mildly interested in the way ridges of muscle appeared and disappeared as Lily breathed.

Lily frowned in concentration, and a moment later James's pectoral muscles jerked up and down. 'Oh my god!'

'That's so weird,' Ze said, now staring in morbid fascination, all her troubles forgot. 'Do it again!'

'I just have to flex my arm,' Lily was babbling excitedly. 'Look, I can make a rhythm!'

'Dorcas, Serena, you've got to see this!' Ze called over her shoulder, not bothering to listen for an answer. 'Hang on,' she mumbled, counting beats in her head as she watched. 'Up, down, up up down - that's Mary Had a Little Lamb!'

'Ha! This is talent,' Lily crowed victoriously. 'What do you want to bet he doesn't even know he can do this?'

'I've never even seen him try it before,' Ze was saying. 'Seriously, Dorcas, Ser -'

She and Lily turned to find Dorcas and Serena staring at them from the other side of Grace's bed, lips pursed and brows raised as they looked most markedly unimpressed. 'If you're quite finished exploiting James Potter's body?' Dorcas asked archly. Lily's cheeks flushed. 'I thought as much,' Dorcas murmured and, with a nod and a sniff, she and Serena turned back to their work.

'It's the hormones,' Lily was muttering darkly as she hastily pulled James's clothes back into order. 'I've got testosterone poisoning. Has to be.'

'Yeah,' Ze nodded, lips twitching. 'Those male hormones - they'll have you lusting after James Potter in a heartbeat.'

The look Lily shot her could've flash-frozen flambé. 'Just because Potter happens to be fit doesn't mean I fancy him - or lust after him.'

Ze shrugged, some of her good mood dissipating at the mention of fancy. 'At least you know he likes you for your mind and manners, not just your body,' she pointed out, thinking of the way James had sighed over Lily in the corridor earlier.

'And how do I know that?' Lily snapped, dropping back down to canvas her trunk for utterly un-sexy clothing options. There was a surprising array of choice...and Ze wasn't even counting the one-piece pyjamas.

'James was drooling over you earlier, despite the fact that you're currently residing in his body,' she explained, leaning against the post of Lily's bed and taking the weight off her foot.

'Ha,' Lily snorted. 'Potter's a complete narcissist - he probably wanks to a mirror, so forgive me if I'm less than impressed.'

'Well, wherever his affections lie, at least he's never had any trouble expressing them,' Ze sighed.

Having James's eyes glance up at her full of Lily's intuitive observation wasn't as disconcerting - or as unfamiliar - as Ze might have expected, which left her wondering if Lily was more easy-going than she thought, or if James was more perceptive than he let on. 'Weren't you and Sirius just holding hands?' Lily asked lightly.

Looking down at the pile of nun habbitry Lily was cobbling together for James to use, Ze decided that her friend needed to be cheered up more than she needed to keep her pride, so she said, 'You remember how you said we'd see how long Sirius not kissing me kept me warm at night?' Lily nodded slowly. 'Well, my toes are feeling a bit chilly.'

'That might just mean hell's frozen over,' Lily pointed out wryly. 'Who knows, maybe I'm going to go downstairs and discover that Potter's magically become a sensitive, intelligent, worthwhile use of oxygen. Look Ze,' she continued when Ze barely cracked a smile, 'you've got every right to change your mind, but if you felt okay about Sirius needing to finish this bet to begin with...well, maybe there's a reason that was your first reaction. Maybe you're supposed to trust your instincts.'

'Meaning maybe he's supposed to not be able to go through with snogging me?' Ze asked, and there was an edge of hysteria in her voice.

'No, meaning maybe you're supposed to let him suffer a little longer,' was the reply, and looking into James's eyes Ze could see that little gleam of sadism that told her Lily really was in there. 'You might have to suffer a bit as well, but everything's happened between the two of you really fast - he hasn't really had time to play the knight in shining armour, and Sirius strikes me as the sort who needs to do that.' The smug grin told Ze that the fairy tale reference was anything but innocent. 'Having to wait for him to finish his quest probably won't be much fun, but it might get you an actual prince rather than the poof with the frog breath and the horse wearing curtains.'

'What kind of horse wears curtains?'

Lily heaved a theatrical sigh. 'I dispense wisdom with a fire hose, and all you get is the bit about the horse. Typical.'

This time, Ze did smile - and felt unexpectedly better. 'No, I understand. And I agree with you - if nothing else, I told Sirius I was okay with it and I'm not going to be that girl that says one thing and does another. He's had enough of that. But right now,' she said with a small, slightly dark smile, 'I am going to be the girl who moans "woe is me" and complains about her shattered foot. So if you need me, I'll be drowning myself in the showers.'

'Very Lady Shalott of you,' Lily nodded approvingly. 'D'you want to borrow that soap my mum sent?'

But Ze never got the opportunity to experience the undeniable luxuries of posh lavender soap, because Serena chose that moment to cry, 'Brilliant - this is it!'

Lily was on her feet in half a second. 'You've found my chastity belt?'

'No,' Serena said with a slow, dangerous smile. 'Grace keeps a diary.'

*.*.*

Twenty minutes later Ze was escorting Lily down the steps to the common room, hoping against hope that this wasn't the last time she'd be seeing her friend outside of a prison cell. 'We'll come to visit tomorrow morning and tell you everything about the diary,' she promised, hoping this was enough incentive to keep Lily from killing James Potter in his sleep. 'Serena'll probably have loads of plans and you're the only one who can talk sense into her, so...'

'So try not to get arrested before sunrise?' Lily asked, doing her best to arch one of James's dark brows. 'Damn - I hate this body,' she huffed when she barely executed a wiggle.

'You'll be out of it soon,' Ze promised with a pat to an unfamiliarly broad shoulder. 'Merlin's beard, this is weird,' she muttered.

'Potter,' Lily growled in gravely tones as she reached the bottom of the stairs.

'Evans,' James replied, looking put out when he realised that his effeminate squeak had most definitely lost the battle of Menacing Greetings. 'Damn,' he mumbled, 'I hate this voice.'

'It used to be music to your ears,' Sirius reminded him caustically. 'Remember?'

'Trouble in paradise?' Lily asked, finally managing to get James's eyebrow to co-operate as she looked back and forth between Sirius and James. 'What a shame,' she tsked, 'and you've already sent the wedding invitations.'

'Like we've never heard that one before - and like it's even insulting. I am completely comfortable in my sexuality,' James said loftily, actually preserving the façade of dignity for a full three seconds. Then he crumbled and said, 'How did you get my eyebrow to do that? I've been trying for years.'

'Potter, I can get your body to do things you've probably never dreamed of,' Lily said, and Ze very nearly slapped herself in the face as she thought of the Mary Had a Little Lamb muscle dance.

James looked like he might need to have a lie down. 'I am completely okay with that,' he managed to say with an unflatteringly rapid nod. 'Do with me as you please.'

'Are you sure you don't want me to walk with you?' Ze asked Lily as she heard the tell-tale snap of cracking knuckles. 'Only I'm getting a bit worried about that not-getting-arrested-before-sunrise thing we were discussing.'

'No thanks,' Lily replied with a small, vicious smile. 'I'm going to need a moment alone with Potter to make a few highly inventive, effective threats.'

'Moony and I can walk you,' Sirius murmured to James, all bitterness over the recent Feelings Talk forgotten in the face of solidarity. 'You might need protection.'

'I can only hope so,' James breathed, his mind still floating in a world none of the rest of them were keen on visiting.

'Shall we?' Lily invited, twirling her wand through her fingers with worrying dexterity.

'Yes please,' James replied, and stepped through the portrait hole like a lamb gambolling eagerly to the slaughter. Lily shot a look between Ze and Sirius, arched the brow again (Show off, thought Ze) and followed him out.

As the portrait swung shut Zeke came to a stop behind Rob and hit him on the back of the head. 'How many times do I have to tell you that staring at Lily Evans' ass will get you killed?'

'No it won't,' Rob sighed, rubbing the back of his head. 'At least, not right now. 'Cos it's not Lily Evans' ass, is it?' he said with the terrifying grin of the logically deluded. 'It's Potter's ass for the moment, and I can stare at it all I like.'

Ze, Sirius, Zeke and Allister Wood were now all staring at him, waiting for the lightening to strike. 'Are you completely insane?' Zeke finally asked.

Rob frowned quizzically at him. 'You keep asking that question like you expect the answer to change.'

'It's like the eyebrow.' Everyone stared at Ze, obviously missing the comparison point by a mile. 'Whether it's Lily in control of the ass or not, it's still Lily's ass,' she sighed, reminding herself that simplicity was the rule in situations such as these. 'And she will kill you if she catches you staring at it.'

'Oh come on, she's so busy plotting Potter's murder she'll never notice,' Rob chuckled.

'He's got a point,' Allister agreed ruefully. 'And if she's like this now, I can't wait to see her at the quidditch tomorrow.'

Ze and Sirius went very still at the very same moment. Slowly their eyes craned round to stare at one another as they whispered one word in perfect tandem: 'Quidditch?'

Allister was giving them a very odd look. 'Yeah - you know, played on broomsticks, four balls, six goal posts, the meaning of life...'

Zeke was now staring at them as well, likely able to sense the fact that most higher brain function had now ceased as Ze and Sirius attempted to remove themselves from reality via wishful thinking. 'You forgot about quidditch, didn't you?' he asked in disgust.

Together they turned to stare at the entrance to Gryffindor tower, the foundations of life as they knew it crumbling around them. 'Look on the bright side,' Ze said after a few moments. 'There's every chance she'll kill him before they even get to the stairs.'

A/N: Part II to follow in a matter of hours. No really. Again.


	40. World Enough and Time: Part II

PLEASE NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THIS FANFIC. ALL RIGHTS GO TO mental OF HARRYPOTTERFANFICTION. This story was removed from hpff, so I reposted here so that fans could have access to it. I am not mental. From this point on, all content belongs solely to mental.

* * *

Chapter 40: World Enough and Time: Part II

'This is rubbish,' Lily informed Dorcas and Serena at nine the next morning. One hand was clutched dangerously around a roll of parchment covered in calculations and scratchy writing, James's hair standing on end as she paced furiously across the hospital floor. 'Fourteen hours of distillation and analysis and all they can tell us is that the sleeping draught was mislabelled! They've got no bloody idea what it really is, apart from the fact that it's probably been in that cabinet since Dumbledore was in nappies. Digweed's useless,' she continued, flinging an arm towards the nurse's office where Madam Digweed could be seen hunched over her desk, white cap no longer its usual pristinely starched self. 'Slughorn's off licking someone's arsehole and Potter legged it before the sun even came up - probably off stuffing his face in the Great Hall!' Dorcas and Serena exchanged hastily smothered guilty look. 'I fell asleep for two minutes and he deserted me - on purpose! They won't even let me use him for experimental testing. I've asked everyone, and all they do is give me looks like I'm the Antichrist. How else are we supposed to figure out what's wrong? Honestly, these people and their morals.'

'Right on,' Dorcas agreed, nodding and raising one fist in support of general ethical decay. Serena shot her a highly displeased look and she grimaced apologetically.

'Sounds like you need a bit of distraction.' Finished with ocular expressions of disapproval, Serena seemed to be shooting for the heights of cheer. 'We knew you wouldn't be keen on going down to the Hall like this, so we've brought you food,' she added, proffering a small basket in which the house elves had obligingly arranged a selection of breakfast pastries and a flagon of juice. 'Look, they've even done homemade marmalade.'

By this hour, Lily had managed to add a sardonic quirk to the already mocking brow-lift, which she now employed with sinfully perfect timing. 'Serena, I hardly think this is the time for marmalade.'

Serena turned desperate eyes to Dorcas, who produced a small red leather-bound book with a flourish. 'How about Grace's diary?' she said with the flair of a particularly inept magician. 'There's loads of, er, distracting stuff in here.'

This was enough to bring Lily out of her self-obsessed state, eyes narrowing even as cognitive function kicked back in. 'Why are you -' she began, only to be cut off by a frantic Serena.

'You wouldn't believe the stuff she wrote down,' came the wave of blather. 'Talk about stupid - it's like a little black book of sins all dated and colour coded -'

Lily's keen eye for detail, honed sharp after two years of prefect duties and six years of James Potter, wasn't interested in little black books or colour coding. She was busy counting heads, and when she reached a grand total of four (including Madam Digweed of the drooping nurse's cap and guttural snores) she knew she had at last spotted the glaring flaw in their carefully orchestrated plot. 'Where's Ze?' she asked silkily, cutting straight to the heart of the matter.

Serena and Dorcas exchanged a look, and then simultaneously thrust their offerings forward again, saying, "Diary!" and "Croissant!" in perfect harmony.

'Where,' Lily practically purred, 'is Ze?'

'Ah, well, see...'

'She had to go down to the quidditch pitch,' Serena said with a nod and a blinding smile. 'Just for a little while - she promised she'd come straight here as soon -'

'Why did she have to go down?' Lily cut in again, now smiling all too pleasantly.

Dorcas was backing slowly towards the door as Serena swallowed and said, 'Well, there's a small gathering - you might call it a match -'

They could practically hear Lily's eyes snapping into a glare as she realised what was going on. 'Potter,' she growled, all the more menacingly creepy because, well, she was Potter. Or she at least looked like him.

'Now Lily,' Serena said in soothing tones, holding both hands up in placation even as she edged a hand towards her wand pocket.

'Don't you "now Lily" me,' Lily hissed. 'That daft bastard is trying to play in his precious game with my body, isn't he?' Dorcas and Serena could only look fearful and ashamed in response, which prompted Lily to purse her lips and given the Shaming Glare with Wagging Finger. 'Digweed!' she shouted at the top of her voice, and in the office the matron jerked awake atop her hefty medical tome, very nearly toppling out of her chair.

'Wh - what?! You haven't broken the Globe With -'

'Get your emergency kit,' Lily snarled, spinning impressively on her heel. 'I'm off to murder Potter!'

'Lily, there's a rule that says he's got to play,' Dorcas was saying in an attempt to appeal to the head girl's rational side. This was rather like attempting to feed a crocodile with a fish fork. 'They've taken it up with McGonagall but -'

Dorcas very suddenly stopped talking because her feet had decided to go salsa dancing without inviting the rest of her body to the party. Half a second later Serena was on the floor in fits of laughter and Lily - who always had been the best in their year at silent spell casting and minor hexes - was sprinting out the doors. Over Dorcas's "ole!"s and Serena's guffaws there came the sound of a massive collision and a decent amount of shouting...and then the dangerous void of silence.

When Dorcas and Serena dragged themselves into the corridor it was to find Remus and Peter rolling on the ground and groaning in pain. 'Wh-what happened?' Doracs panted desperately as she executed an alarmingly deft hip shimmy.

'Lily,' Peter moaned in reply.

'D-d-don't worry,' Remus said from the bottom of the heap, one hand rising in the air to wave a length of wood back and forth. 'I got her wand.'

Massaging her stomach and gasping for air, Serena looked down the corridor as though she could still see Lily rampaging towards destiny. 'That isn't going to stop her killing him.'

'No,' Dorcas agreed. 'It just means he's going to hurt worse when she does.'

*.*.*

'I'm not sure I like this sitting down to pee stuff,' James confided to Ze in the posh white expanse of the girls' quidditch changing rooms. 'If you're sitting down, how are you supposed to aim?'

Ze paused in the midst of attaching an arm guard to give him a very unimpressed look. 'I wasn't aware there were targets in the bottom of the loos,' she murmured, tongue very firmly in cheek. After all, she was sharing her girls-only sanctuary with none other than James Potter - and that was only because he'd insisted that he would die before he would sully Lily's pristine shell with the terrors of the boys' side. So here they were, preparing for the very first match of their last school quidditch season, Ze facing down the incredibly unlikely sight of Lily Evans contemplating the donning of quidditch gear. But as she finished speaking it was very definitely James who gave her a puzzled look out of Lily's eyes before shaking his head and examining the quidditch robes and sport kit laid out before him. The robes were his own - his lucky ones, which had an acquaintance with laundering so fleeing one might call it a meeting by proxy. Still, the name POTTER was stitched onto the back in gold, and Ze had agreed that attempting alter the robes to fit his new physique would be something akin to sacrilege. The jogging bottoms and undershirt were spares borrowed from Ze's collection - she and Lily weren't precisely the same size, but a few handy sartorial charms (courtesy of the real Miss Evans) and they would do. Not that James was feeling particularly confident about his new, admittedly muggle-influenced sporting style.

'I don't think this is going to fit,' he sighed, poking at the bottoms with visible trepidation.

'Well, you're about six inches shorter and three stone lighter, aren't you?' Ze pointed out, snapping the last closure on the arm guard into place and turning to regard the pyjama bottoms and enormous sweatshirt James had yet to remove from Lily's body. He had, at least, removed the fluffy green dressing gown Lily had deigned to loan him; Ze had already heard the story about how Lily had insisted on casting a Blinding Hex the night before, proceeding to changed James into her sleepwear when he couldn't see as though he were a giant, visually handicapped doll. When she had first heard the tale from an awed, lust-struck James Ze had wondered if Lily had perhaps included a go at sensual massage in this undressing-and-re-dressing. But, considering that James was alive, rather than lying in a pile of ashes in the hospital wing, contact had likely been both minimal and clinical. Well done Lily.

'Why haven't you got the stuff I gave you on yet?' she asked him impatiently, glancing at her watch to see that they barely have five minutes before they were due to meet the rest of the Gryffindor team in the boys' side for a pre-match We're Going to Die - And Look Like Idiots As We Do It talk. When James blushed in response, she rolled her eyes and said, 'Look, it isn't hard - you just pull the sports bra on over your head and the rest is exactly like your gear only smaller, so just -'

'I can't put that stuff on,' James hissed, looking around as though a Papal Inquisition were bearing down on them for the mere suggestion of nudity. 'I'd have to take this stuff,' he gestured to the clothes he was wearing, 'off!'

'Well yes, that is the idea behind changing clothes.'

'But then I'd see Lily naked!'

'James, you've wanted to see Lily naked since your balls dropped - now is not the time for second guessing!' Ze cried. When James simply folded his arms mulishly across Lily's chest, she fought off the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose and instead reached for her calm voic. 'You've already urinated in her body, how could this possibly be more invasive?' She paused for the necessary moment to blush, and then appended that question with, 'That came out a little awkwardly, but you know what I mean. How is it different?'

'It just is,' he sniffed. 'Lily requested that I not see her naked, and I intend to respect her wishes. I know she would do the same in my case.'

Ze thought of James's muscles dancing to nursery rhymes. 'Oh, I don't think she's really got room to complain.'

James favoured her with a prim, almost condescending look. 'Ze, she hasn't even let my body have a pee - she told Madam Digweed it was either a cat eater or permanent kidney damage.' Ze frowned, then mentally translated "cat eater" to "catheter" and shrugged. 'She'd rather sacrifice kittens than violate my virtue,' James was saying loftily. 'What does that tell you?'

'That of the two of you, Lily's the only one who can keep her hands out of your pants,' Ze deadpanned. 'Now stop whinging and get changed - if Madam Hooch won't let us postpone until you've got your body back we might as well get this farce on the stage.'

'You're certainly in a bossy mood,' James griped, the amusement slowly leaking out of the situation at the mention of their impending doom.

'Yeah, well, whatever it takes,' Ze mumbled blackly, reaching for her broomstick.

There was a sigh, followed by the rustle of clothing being removed, and Ze pushed out a breath in relief at finally having convinced him to do the sensible thng. It was about time something started going her way, really... a thought that kept her warm right up until James used Lily's voice to say, 'You know, I never thought you'd be the sort who'd resort to manipulation to get your way,' in a cool, almost rude tone.

Ze froze in the midst of her last-minute broom inspection, the prickle on the back of her neck telling her this was about something much more serious than the wearing of borrowed quidditch gear. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

The look he shot her was vintage Lily: knowing and sharp and infinitely cool. 'You know exactly what it means Ze,' he said cryptically. 'Don't think I didn't notice what you did to Sirius last night - using Pete to throw Grace in his face. You're angry because he's putting the bet before you and you're using Grace to get back at him for it.'

'What - that's bollocks!' Ze snapped, broom now completely forgotten as she stared at James, trying to figure out if this was a joke or some sick test of loyalty. 'The whole reason I -'

But James wasn't interested in listening to her defend herself. In fact, if Ze hadn't seen him expertly lay out his padding she would have assumed that the words spewing out of Lily's mouth belonged to Grace rather than James. 'So what, it's just a coincidence that you start pushing Pete to keep doing Grace the day after Sirius tells you he can't touch you until the bet's over?'

'James, he said he didn't care that Pete had had sex with Grace,' Ze snapped, stepping forward to intimidate him - because, for once, she was the taller one. Had someone slipped him something in his pumpkin juice? This was completely irrational... 'You were right there when he said that it didn't bother him - you heard him!'

'What he says and what he feels are two completely different things Ze!' James shot right back, and the vitriol in his tone finally convinced her that this was entirely for real. 'Grace was a lot of first things for Pa- Sirius, and you know it. And there you go, throwing it in his face, using his emotions against him because you know that that's the easiest way to get to him.' This wasn't James relieving frustration - this was a proper rant, complete with vicious personal attacks. 'And if that wasn't enough, you've got to confuse him by rubbing yourself all over him one minute and brushing him off the next! What've you been doing, taking secret lessons from Serena and Grace? He's so confused he doesn't know the difference between his head and his ass where you're concerned.' Taking a deep breath, James shook his head in what he obviously perceived to be righteous indignation as he attempted to calm himself down.

'I'm not doing this because I've gone off you or anything - I guess I've just lost a bit of respect for you. I always thought you'd be the last person I'd ever say this to' he continued, anger and disappointment twisting his face, 'but try not to be such a- a girl about getting involved with him.' When Ze only gaped at him in stunned silence, he shook his head again and went about jerking his borrowed shirt on. 'I pushed him to go after you, you know - I thought you'd be perfect for him. The antithesis of everything Grace was. I told him he should do everything he could not to let you get away - I even told him off last night for not giving you what you obviously want and sealing the deal. He doesn't see that you're playing games Ze, but I do, okay? And while I still think you and Sirius belong together I have to say that I'm beginning to wonder if you haven't gone a little too far in making friends with every girl in sight. I'm just worried that you're going to stuff it up because you suddenly think the way to get what you want is to twist him around and manipulate him into doing what you want -'

'Who the hell do you think you are?' Ze said quite suddenly, her voice soft and deadly quiet and silencing James more effectively than a blow to the throat. 'You aren't James Potter - at least, you're not the James I've known for years. Because he would never be so disrespectful - or so stupid - as to say this shit to me. Never mind that I have no idea what you mean about my rubbing all over Sirius and then brushing him off, because that's complete pants, but where do you get off, calling me a manipulative slut?'

James was obviously slightly startled by her icy tone, but he shook it off enough to say, 'Come off it Ze, I saw you - last night you distracted him from asking questions by holding his hand and cuddling up to him, but when he got you alone and went to kiss you you told him you weren't interested and -'

'He crushed my sodding foot!' Ze shouted as she completely lost hold of her temper at last, the words ringing off the tile. 'Forgive me if having my toes ground to powder slightly dampened the mood! And he wasn't trying to kiss me - he isn't going to kiss me until he's out of that stupid bet! He was going to do exactly what he'd done the night before, because he knows he can and he knows I like it. Not that any of that is your business because you aren't Sirius! And he didn't tell you he'd tried to kiss me, and he didn't tell you I'd brushed him off -'

'He didn't need to! I know him -'

'You don't know a damned thing,' Ze said, voice like a knife. She'd finally got over the shock of this being James, and she'd decided that, friend or not, there was absolutely no reason to let him get away with backing her into a corner and kicking away with hobnail boots. 'And what's more, you haven't said a damned thing - at least not to Sirius. Not about this. Because if you had I would know. Because you're right about Sirius, playing his emotions is the easiest way to get to him, and this would sure as hell be playing his emotions. But he's been normal as he ever is all morning, which means that the only person you've been treating to your lectures and your guilt trips is me. Which, Potter, makes you the sort who resorts to manipulation to get his way.'

She was now toe-to-toe with James, and on any other occasion would have been pleased to note that she was towering impressively over him. 'I trust Sirius James, which is why I was willing to take him at his word when he said he didn't care about Peter and Grace. The same way he was willing to take me at my word when I said I understood why he needs to finish the bet. We've got that sorted out between us just fine, so you can keep your concerns and you machinations to yourself. I know that you're his best friend, and I know that that means you're going to worry about him and want him to be happy, but what happens between Sirius and me isn't something you get to have a say in, okay? Whatever happens, it's between him and me, and you're just going to have to trust that I care about him enough to keep myself from hurting him exactly the way you're suggesting I might.'

The expression on James's face was one of utter shock and almost child-like worry - and it told Ze that she had hit the proverbial nail on its head. It was that naked, irresolvable worry that kept her from truly going for his throat, but she was still too angry - and too personally affronted - to truly soften her tone as she said, 'I know it's difficult to accept that there might be something in his life you can't be an immediate part of, because you two are like brothers and I would never do a thing to try to change that, but you are going to have to accept that there will be things between Sirius and me that just aren't any of your business. I like you James, I honestly do, so I will only say this once: don't ever play this card with me again, because I will not put up with it. And if you ever belittle Sirius again by attempting to put words in his mouth because you think being his best mate gives you the right to, you'll find out just how good I am at being a girl who fights like a boy.' The exhalation that followed this seemed to expel a cathartic rush of insecurities - but her voice still seethed with barely suppressed anger as she said, 'Now get your shit together - we're out of time for hen talk.'

*.*.*

'Look - that painting's a smoking ruin - she must have gone this way -'

'I still don't see why we can't just find McGonagall and get her to call off the match,' Peter panted as he trotted down a flight of stairs in the wake of Remus, Serena and Dorcas and her bow.

'Weren't you listening when Angus Whoever was explaining the rules?' Serena asked impatiently.

'That would be Allister Wood,' Remus corrected with weary patience. 'And I think Pete was still with Grace, running interference for Operation Catfight when Wood was presenting the unabridged history of quidditch.'

'Oh, I'm sorry,' Serena replied sweetly. 'I must have been too busy considering suicide by split end to catch the finer points of why Potter's going to die today.'

'The basic premise of what Wood said,' a surprisingly un-winded Dorcas interjected in the interest of diverting a national disaster, 'is that due to a precedent set by the Madagascar national team at the quidditch world cup of 1367, a match may not be cancelled or postponed because players from one side or the other are not in possession of their true physical forms. So long as no body parts are damaged or missing, the game must be played.'

'What?' Pete gaped. 'But - but that's rubbish! James isn't missing part of his body - the whole thing's gone. Well, not gone, but Lily's got it, which is next to the same thing.'

'I think what Alli - and Dorcas,' Remus nodded in acknowledgement, 'are trying to say is that it doesn't matter what shape a player's body is in, so long as he's got one.'

'Exactly,' Dorcas confirmed, pushing her glasses up her nose as she started down a narrow, rickety staircase which constituted one of Hogwarts' many shortcuts. 'I believe your friend's exact words were "it doesn't matter what you get turned into - Madagascar were lucky it was three-toed sloths. They might not have been able to go much faster than a crawl, but they hung onto their brooms like bloody anything - Macedonia didn't stand a chance."'

Remus and Peter looked suitably impressed by this eidetic recall; Serena merely sighed. 'Does anyone else agree that the only good thing about quidditch are the leather trousers?' Peter immediately raised his hand. 'Huh,' said Serena. 'You and Grace really have got something in common.'

'She can't be far ahead,' Dorcas called from the front of the search party and the bottom of the stairs.

The others hurried up behind her, piling up on the last few steps when they spotted the enormous pile of rubble surrounding a large hole in the stones just ahead. Peter swallowed. 'Isn't this where you usually find the door that pretends to be a wall?'

'I think you can change "usually" to "used",' Dorcas sighed, examining the blast radius.

Serena came to a stop beside Remus and breathed a worried sigh. 'She must really be serious this time - wandless magic's no joke.'

Peter and Dorcas were now picking their way through the ruined fragments of stone, and Remus grimaced as Pete took a chunk of falling mortar to the left ear. 'Poor Prongs - he's spent the last six years holding out for romance, and the best he can hope for is manual strangulation.'

'Some people consider that romantic,' Serena pointed out as she watched Dorcas prod a bit of stone with her foot. 'What?' she asked when she caught Remus staring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. 'Maybe not romantic, but they definitely get into it.'

'Y-y-y-you -'

'Don't be silly,' Serena demurred. 'I've never even been tempted. Morganna magazine did an article on common kinkiness last month - asphyxiation was right below S&M on the list, which makes sense when you think about it,' she shrugged, ignoring Remus's slightly pained whimper. 'But Lily's always seemed more like the bondage sort to me,' she mused as she wound her arm through his. 'It's funny,' she chuckled as Remus thought of sawdust and his Great Aunt Mildred, 'this really isn't how I pictured our first date going.'

Remus thought of chocolates and roses and a long walk around the moonlit Black Lake, of holding hands in Hogsmeade and discussing books over tea at Madame Puddifoots. And then he looked at the smoking ruin in the wall. 'It isn't what I pictured either,' he agreed. 'But it could be worse.'

*.*.*

'I think we should turn the Ravenclaws into octopi.' Everyone slowly turned to stare at Allister. It was minutes before the game was due to start, and they were cloistered in the boys' locker room, valiantly ignoring the summons to the pitch. 'You know, to give us a tactical advantage.'

'Have you been drinking?' Zeke asked.

'No,' Alli said slowly. 'Why?'

'Because that's the sort of idea I usually expect from Rob,' Zeke explained.

'I only get a drink when it's a Hogsmeade weekend,' Rob pointed out.

'Yeah, that's my point.'

'We are not turning the Ravenclaws into octopi,' Sirius said impatiently, deciding that he really was going to have to stop staring at the frigid silence between James and Ze long enough to nip this one in the bud. 'We should at least turn them into bookmarks so that their friends will still want to hang out with them.'

'Well it won't matter what we turn them into if Clive doesn't turn up in the next five minutes,' Allister pointed out morosely. 'We'll have to forfeit if we haven't got a full squad.'

'He's never missed a match,' Ze said flatly, the usual defensive heat absent from her voice.

'But he hasn't exactly been pulling his weight since he discovered sex, has he?' James snapped back, glaring at Ze. Eyebrows across the room went up; Sirius stepped back with a shrug to indicate that he had absolutely no idea what was going on.

'Thanks for that opinion Lily,' Ze bit back, and this time there was no trouble finding the heat in her voice. 'And how much weight d'you think you'll be pulling, considering you've never played quidditch before!'

'I've played quidditch since I was four!' James shouted, this stab at his manhood being keenly felt in bits that were presently missing in action.

'Yeah, well Lily's body almost failed flying back in first year, so good luck working with co-ordination and muscle memory that aren't there -'

'Bloody hell - you don't reckon PMS is contagious do you?' Rob whispered to Zeke.

The door to the boys' changing room chose that moment to crash open, and in spilled Clive, flailing and breathless as he tumbled across the threshold in a run so frantic it was actually more of a full-body hurl. 'H-help!' he gasped as he clawed his way across the floor. 'Help! She's trying to kill me!'

The spat between Ze and James was forgotten as everyone gaped at Clive, who was dishevelled and dirt-spattered and frighteningly pale. 'What the hell's happened to you?' Sirius asked.

'Claudia!' came Clive's strangled cry as he slammed the door shut and began dragging the nearest bench forward to barricade it. 'She got me - yesterday - locked me in the cellar!'

'What?'

'Hogwarts has a cellar?'

'Really? It must me massive -'

'Clive, calm down and tell us -' Ze was saying, having got Clive by the shoulders in what was either a comforting or restraining grip, depending on how you felt about strangleholds.

'We've got to tell them!' Clive was babbling. 'We've got to warn everyone! She's completely unhinged - she was going to keep me down there as her personal slave-'

'There'd be worse masters,' Rob shrugged. 'What?' he said when Zeke shot him a glare. 'Just picture her in leather - works wonders on a Ravenclaw.'

'We've got to get McGonagall,' Sirius informed James and Allister, who were watching as Ze attempted to restrain a ranting Clive. There was no missing the wide, white-ringed eyes or the spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. 'He's completely lost it. And if he's telling the truth, we'll have proper grounds to cancel the match,' he added, the incentive immediately spurring Allister to start de-barricading the door. 'See if you can't get her to come in quietly, we don't want the whole school knowing -'

But no sooner had Allister removed the bench than the door was flung open once again to reveal Minerva McGonagall in all her tartan-bonneted glory. She'd obviously been speaking even before the door blew open, and they were privileged enough to catch the crescendo: 'You are perilously close to losing the first match of the season without even taking the field -'

She couldn't get further than that, though, because Clive, on hearing the familiar authoritative tones, had run forward, latching onto McGonagall and very nearly tackling her. The deputy headmistress staggered back out onto the edge of the pitch as he clung to her, shouting, 'She's gone mad Miss! Completely insane! She locked me in the cellar and told me she wouldn't let me out until I agreed to be the boyfriend she wanted and -'

'Mr Brotherton, collect yourself! This is a quidditch match, not a drama festival!' But her words fell on deaf ears; Clive continued to spew forth the details of his alleged kidnapping as McGonagall attempted to calm him down enough to make sense of what he was saying. She had drawn him in close, obviously in the interest of not attracting attention, and seemed to be growing more worried by the moment - whether because she actually believed him or because she thought he might have been poisoned was anyone's guess.

Peering around the door, Sirius could see the assembled Ravenclaw team staring, wide-eyed and superior, as Clive gave admissible evidence that he was mad as a hatter. Madam Hooch, the young and - according to every post-pubescent male at Hogwarts - incredibly fit flying instructor, was abandoning her post beside the ball crate to see if McGonagall needed assistance. Thankfully Clive was still wearing jeans and a dark jumper, and his appearance hadn't attracted the attention of the crowd the way the brilliant red of Gryffindor quidditch robes would have. As it was, having the Ravenclaws staring in patent superiority was obnoxious enough - especially as it was looking like a forfeit was inevitable since Clive was bound to end the morning restrained and medicated.

'We must postpone, Miss Hooch,' McGonagall was saying in hushed tones as the referee drew near. 'Until we can determine if he has been tampered with magically there is no way to know if it will be a forfeit or a re-match-'

'D'you think you could cart him off rather quickly?' one of the Ravenclaw chasers leaned round their captain to say. 'Only I've got a lot of reading to do for Runes and -' Thankfully one of his teammates slammed an elbow into his ribs, and Madam Hooch moved towards him to give a quick lecture on the dangers of cobbing one's own team members.

The rest of the Gryffindor team edged their way out of the locker rooms to watch the farce unfold as Clive fell to his knees before McGonagall, wailing unintelligibly about sexual favours and a rat the size of a small horse. His antics - and the appearance of red robes on the field of play - were beginning to draw a few eyes, and the noise coming from the stands increased ten-fold. Later, James would reflect that this desire to witness the spectacle (and the subsequent abandonment of the safety of the changing rooms) probably hadn't been the best idea; after all, it was how Lily ended up finding him. One minute he was listening to accusations of sex trafficking, the next he was staring into his own hazel eyes and acknowledging that death was a very real possibility. She was ten yards away and closing, and he found it ironic that his last words might very well be, 'Merlin, she's gorgeous.'

*.*.*

A very breathless Serena was the first to spot the brewing duel between Lily and James from the top of the quidditch stands. Spotting James was easy enough - Lily's red hair clashed most magnificently with the scarlet quidditch robes - but it took her a few minutes to locate Lily. They did, after all, have to find the trail of bodies first. The rest of the school seemed preoccupied in trading over-used insults and speculating on how much alcohol there was likely to be at each house's post-match celebration, but the small group of Gryffindor seventh years hadn't sprinted to the very top of the stands to listen to rumours of black market butter beer. For once, they were here for the view - and it looked like it was paying off. 'Thank Circe,' Serena gasped. 'McGonagall's there - and Ze! I don't think she'll let Lily...oh...uh...'

Remus, Dorcas and Peter crowded against the railing to watch as Lily pushed her way through a small knot of bodies - the oddly disoriented and disorganised Gryffindor quidditch brigade - to get at James. No one really seemed to realise that the head girl was approaching with a vision and a vendetta; no one, that is, except for the four atop the stands. As they watched heads turned to look from McGonagall's tartan-enswathed figure to the unusually menacing breadth of James's shoulders. Sirius was too far away to save his best friend, and Rob and Zeke seemed to be staring dumbly back and forth between the two figures as Lily stalked forward. Without omnioculars the four Gryffindors in the stands couldn't see much more than an indication that she was speaking; James, on hearing her words, stumbled back a step or two and fished his wand out of his pocket. In response, Lily flung her hands out to indicate that she was wandless. There was a sigh of relief from the four in the stands as Ze stepped forward, lips moving, obviously speaking soothing words of peace and calm...a sigh that was sucked right back in as Ze flourished her own wand, offering it to Lily as her mouth unmistakably formed the words, 'Here, use mine.'

'Not good,' Remus mumbled as he caught sight of her unexpectedly stone expression. 'Not good -'

'Why isn't McGonagall stopping them?' Peter cried from Dorcas's other side as Lily accepted the wand and twirled it experimentally between her fingers.

'Who's that latched onto her?' the bespectacled girl asked, squinting at the deputy headmistress and the body wrapped around her like a limpet. 'Looks like he's trying to use her as a human shield...'

'Hey, that's Clive!' Remus cried in disbelief, watching as Gryffindor's most whipped seventh year threw himself behind McGonagall, pointing wildly over her shoulder as his eyes rolled in fear.

Not that anyone but the other seventh year Gryffindors were paying attention to this. The rest of the crowd had finally spotted the fight igniting between the head boy and girl, and attention was rapidly shifting as word spread through the sands. A flash of red light bloomed below, indicating that the duel was officially in progress. A giant gasping, "Oooooh!" cut through the air as a tinny cry echoed up from Lily or James one.

'Will they stop hurling hexes,' Remus muttered darkly. 'I can't see what's going on!'

As if to personally oblige him, the official commentary crackled to life. 'This is not your average Potter/Evans duel!' the magically-modified voice of Hogwarts' quidditch announcer, sixth year Hufflepuff Gordon Wilkes, rang out over the pitch, drowning out the shouts, screams, and bet-makings of the crowd of students. 'For those of you who aren't in the know, Hogwarts' own head girl has been forced to switch bodies with the loathe of her life, none other than mopheaded myopic James Potter.'

'I swear he dresses in drag and writes blurbs for Witch Weekly,' Serena grumbled, glowering in the direction of the commentator's box. 'There can't possibly be two people so un-gifted in the art of commentary on the same planet.'

Gordon, it seemed, hadn't got this particular memo. 'Rumour has it the switch occurred last night, but details on how and why are still thin at best - let's just hope it isn't catching - one Evans and one Potter are enough! Despite the Gryffindors' best efforts the quidditch is still on - but will Potter's head be once Evans is finished with him? And everyone thought this was going to be yet another snore-off between the Gryffindor drama queens and the Ravenclaw reading team!' This garnered boos all around - from the Ravenclaws because Gordon was dating one of their own and they had expected more support, from the Gryffindors because, well, this was a quidditch match and that's what you did.

But there was a small contingent of Gryffindors who couldn't be bothered to listen to the rubbish spewing from the commentator's box. In fact, they weren't even interested in the fact that both Lily and James had abandoned their wands and now appeared to be rolling on the ground in what was either agony or ecstasy - or in James's case, potentially both. 'What's Clive shouting about?' Serena was asking, pushing Peter aside to get a better look. 'He looks like he's about to have a heart attack but I can't see what he's pointing at,' she complained even as Gordon said, 'Hang on to your betting money, it looks like there's another fight brewing! As the professors rush to the rescue, Gryffindor chaser Clive Brotherton is hiding behind his mummy - I mean Professor McGonagall. Is this a bid to get out of playing, or has he got something to fear?'

'Oh shit,' Peter breathed as the reason for Clive's terror came sprinting onto the pitch from the direction of the castle, bushy curls flying wildly.

'Looks like it might be the latter!' Gordon cried gleefully. 'That's Brotherton's girlfriend, Ravenclaw Claudia Somethingorother. And unlike the Ravenclaw quidditch players, she's got a bit of a competitive streak!' This garnered more pompously-parsed death threats from the Ravenclaws, even as the Gryffindors began to shout "foul!" as Claudia shoved Rob out of the way to get to Clive, who was now attempting to climb beneath the skirt of McGonagall's robes. Ze and Sirius, who had been attempting to break Lily and James apart, whirled around as Claudia's mouth moved - apparently she was shouting something, and judging by the way Ze's hands fisted, it hadn't been something fit for young ears. 'If a fight's what she's after, looks like Zenobia Meridian's willing to give it to her,' Gordon continued, now sounding positively drunk on excitement. 'You might remember Meridian as that Gryffindor who recently realised she was a girl and started handing her knickers out to anyone who asked -'

There was a roar of protest from Gryffindor and a shout of laughter from Slytherin.

'But right now it's looking like she might be adding "unprovoked duelist" to her list of accomplishments!' came the commentary as Ze rounded on Claudia, leaving Sirius to keep Lily from becoming a murderer. The entire crowd had gone wild by this point, bloodlust pumping through the collective conscious as they demanded more violence to appease their thirst. Claudia was now shoving at Ze, her face unhealthily red as she ignored McGonagall's shouts and Madam Hooch's attempts to beat her into submission with a broom handle. It was impossible to hear what was being said, but a line was crossed when Claudia screeched something and threw herself at Ze. Within seconds the crowds' shouting reached fever pitch.

'She's just punched her,' Remus said disbelievingly, watching the melee below as though it were happening in a different world. Preferably one where detention and expulsion were not possibilities. Because Ze had, in fact, just laid Claudia out across the ground with one solid blow.

The Ravenclaw team, apparently deciding that the time for verbal evisceration was through, retaliated with everything they had - which turned out to be the combined bludgeoning force of the better part of the Restricted Section. Clive had now entered the catatonic stage of his full-blown hysterical fit and McGonagall was attempting to get her wand arm free from beneath his collapsing body - in order to silence the obnoxious Gordon Wilkes or curse the lot of them straight to hell was anyone's guess. Lily and James were rolling on the ground, engaged in all manner of inappropriate touching as Lily made full use of her superior weight and strength.

'And Ravenclaw are officially in the game!' Gordon was crowing wildly. 'Beater Dorian Lumley's taking a swing - ouch - Gryffindor tosspot Sirius Black's going to have a lovely bruise from that. He's just taken A Brief History of Elvish Warfare to the face - all 1,234 pages of it - anyone seen Madam Digweed?'

'Where are the teachers!?' Remus was shouting.

'Kill him Ze! Kill him!' Dorcas shrieked from beside him.

'Gryffindor beater Rob McEaneny's got Ravenclaw chaser - does anyone actually know who plays for Ravenclaw? - well, whoever he is, Rob's got him by the spine and is shaking his pages like there's no tomorrow,' Gordon boomed. 'Careful lad, that's how the 'Claws like it - everything by the book! Gerrit? By the book - just ask my girlfriend -'

'Someone kill him,' Remus growled, turning to push his way through the crowd. Fights had broken out throughout the stands, and the teachers were valiantly attempting to stop the violence whilst making their way to the pitch where the main work was still to be done. 'We've got to help them!' Remus shouted to Serena. 'No, not them!' he cried when she turned to get Peter and Dorcas, who were both busy screaming at the crowd below. 'Them!' he pointed to the pitch where Ze was guarding Sirius's back as he attempted to pull the writing ball that was JamesLily away from the stampeding brawl of red and blue. 'There's no way McGonagall can stop that by herself. It's come full circle now,' he continued, ranting to himself at the top of his voice, sure no one was listening as he fought his way towards the stairs. 'James's always wanted to get inside Lily, and now that he's finally got there she's going to kill him for it and everyone else has to die in the process -'

He tripped to a stop and twisted to look over his shoulder when he felt Serena's hand clamp around his arm. 'What did you just say?' she whispered, and all he saw was her mouth moving in the chaos, which was, to say the least, distracting.

'What?' he shouted. 'I said we've got to help -'

'No, about it coming full circle!' Now she was shouting too, and her enormous brown eyes were lighting up with something Remus fervently hoped was to do with him. 'Full circle - Remus, that's brilliant! I know how to fix it!'

Okay, so she's clinically insane - at least she's got nice ti- table manners. 'Serena,' he said as calmly as he could, considering he was yelling himself hoarse. 'I don't think you can fix this by yourself -' he began, gesturing at the riot around them.

'Of course I can't!' she screamed back. 'I don't mean this,' she explained, her hands mimicking his. 'I mean Lily and James!'

The crowd was surging into one massive punch-up, and Remus lost the last bit of her sentence as they were crushed together. 'What?' he screamed into her face, watching her lips for a reply, knowing he'd never hear her.

It was a good thing he was watching, too, because he'd never have believed she'd said it if he hadn't seen her lips form the words. 'Lily and James!' that perfect pink mouth said. 'I know how to switch them back!'

A/N -

this may take the prize for longest update ever posted in one night - well, if you combine it with the first part of the chapter...which you should ;) apologies for taking years to post - as always, excuses of a busy life stand, blah blah blah. on that note though, I do have some sad news my life is about to become exponentially more difficult, and for the next month I will have so many things to get sorted out that I won't have time to breathe, much less guarantee an update. I know that a month has become more or less the standard period between updates, so I will do my best to keep it within that time frame... but, I would appreciate everyone's patience in waiting for the next chapters as they will be the last and, since you've all endured so nobly, waiting for the end, I would rather take the time to write decent chapters that won't need to be completely changed later.

now that that's out of the way though, what oh what will happen between James and Ze? has he stuck his nose in where it doesn't belong, or is Ze being a bit too vociferous in establishing the boundaries of her relationship with Sirius? will Sirius ever find out? and will everyone stop giving them advice long enough for them to get together on their own? Clive's finally resurfaced and Claudia might be facing charges - but will anyone even care? Serena's got a plan and Dorcas has a plot and Grace's diary is out there somewhere... anyone want to guess how it will end?

as always, thanks to all who've read and those who review - comments, quotes and constructive criticism are all welcome! thanks for reading!


	41. The End

I'm sorry to say that there are no more posted chapters of Match.

mental stopped at this point, back in 2008.

I hoped you enjoyed what mental did share.

Happy reading.

lindsay1220 XX

P.S. If you want to write an ending to Match., please PM me. All those of good quality will be posted to another fic on my account. When the first ending is posted, I will update here.


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